Cellphone sales in China, the world’s No. 1 handset market, grew the slowest in four years as consumers gave to relief efforts for the country’s deadliest earthquake in 32 years, JPMorgan Chase & Co said.
Sales gained 8.7 percent last month from a year earlier, the slowest rate since 2004 and less than half the 18.4 percent increase recorded for the first four months of this year, JPMorgan analyst Charles Guo wrote in a report to clients on Thursday. The impact of the 7.9-magnitude quake that hit Sichuan May 12, killing almost 70,000 people, could continue to hurt sales into next month, he wrote.
Flooding in southern China this month, where some regions have been hit by the most rain in 100 years, and a government crackdown on smuggled and counterfeit handsets have also affected sales, Hong Kong-based Guo wrote. Demand may not recover until after the Olympics, the report said.
China is home to more mobile-phone users than the combined populations of the US, Japan and the UK, data showed. Nokia Oyj was the country’s No. 1 brand of phones with a 35 percent share of the market at the end of last year, followed by Samsung Electronics Co’s 13 percent and Motorola Inc’s 12 percent, Beijing-based researcher Analysys International said.
Separately, Nokia may have lost market share to Samsung as the Suwon, South Korea-based company “continues its aggressive market-share assault on the low-end segment,” Guo wrote.
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