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.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
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