Apple iPhone 13 pre-orders at JD.com soar 33% to over 2 million from last year’s 1.5 million
The iPhone 13 line
The hashtag #LiningUpForiPhoneOnTmall has been trending strongly on Weibo with posts related to the hashtag generating over 200 million views. One Weibo subscriber notes, “I thought we were supposed to support Huawei and other Chinese brands. But it seems like better products speak louder than patriotism.”
Thanks to U.S. sanctions, Huawei is not considered an iPhone competitor at this time
Counterpoint’s Qi expects the iPhone 13 series to continue to generate the strong momentum of the iPhone 12 line. “There are reasons to believe that the iPhone 13 would sell less because of the lack of new features,” he said. “But considering Huawei’s plight, we think the iPhone 13 will sell just as well (as the previous line).”
During the second quarter, Chinese smartphone shipments on the mainland dropped by 17% to 74.9 million units. During the same period last year, 90.7 million handsets shipped proving that China’s top Android manufacturers, which include the aforementioned Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi, were unable to make up for the lack of a strong presence in the country from Huawei.
To show you how important Huawei has been to the Chinese smartphone market specifically and the country in general, consider what happened during the third quarter of 2019 before the sanctions started to bite. During that quarter, the company’s phone shipments soared 66% year-over-year giving it a remarkable 42.4% market share in China. The latter remains the largest smartphone market in the world.
