Apple Inc sold 5 percent fewer iPhones and lost ground to Chinese rivals in the final quarter of last year, reflecting the absence of Apple Intelligence in its largest market outside the US.
The iPhone slipped a point to 18 percent market share last year, Counterpoint Research data showed.
Archrival Samsung Electronics Co also gave up share to faster-growing Android device makers from China, led by Xiaomi Corp (小米) and Vivo Communication Technology Co (維沃).
Photo: Bloomberg
Apple marked a 2 percent sales decline for the full year, the data showed, at a time that the wider market grew 4 percent globally.
California-based Apple has been playing catchup on artificial intelligence (AI), with its suite of AI enhancements rolling out in stages following the launch of the iPhone 16 in September last year.
Those AI additions are not yet available in any form in China, as the company is still working to secure local partners that can help provide features such as AI writing assistance and image generation.
Analysts last quarter also began warning that some investors harbored overly optimistic expectations of AI features.
“Apple’s iPhone 16 series was met with a mixed response, partly due to a lack of availability of Apple Intelligence at launch,” Counterpoint director Tarun Pathak said. “However, Apple continued to grow strongly in its non-core markets like Latin America.”
While it sold fewer units in China, Apple saw an increased proportion coming from its pricier Pro and Pro Max models, which accounted for more than half of all sales in the country.
Lenovo Group Ltd’s (聯想) Motorola and Shenzhen-based Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Honor Device Co (榮耀) were the fastest-growing brands in the top 10, the researchers found.
China’s smartphone makers are all developing their own in-house AI tools and agents, including services that can perform tasks on a user’s behalf.
RECYCLE: Taiwan would aid manufacturers in refining rare earths from discarded appliances, which would fit the nation’s circular economy goals, minister Kung said Taiwan would work with the US and Japan on a proposed cooperation initiative in response to Beijing’s newly announced rare earth export curbs, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. China last week announced new restrictions requiring companies to obtain export licenses if their products contain more than 0.1 percent of Chinese-origin rare earths by value. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on Wednesday responded by saying that Beijing was “unreliable” in its rare earths exports, adding that the US would “neither be commanded, nor controlled” by China, several media outlets reported. Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato yesterday also
Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), founder and CEO of US-based artificial intelligence chip designer Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Friday celebrated the first Nvidia Blackwell wafer produced on US soil. Huang visited TSMC’s advanced wafer fab in the US state of Arizona and joined the Taiwanese chipmaker’s executives to witness the efforts to “build the infrastructure that powers the world’s AI factories, right here in America,” Nvidia said in a statement. At the event, Huang joined Y.L. Wang (王英郎), vice president of operations at TSMC, in signing their names on the Blackwell wafer to
‘DRAMATIC AND POSITIVE’: AI growth would be better than it previously forecast and would stay robust even if the Chinese market became inaccessible for customers, it said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its full-year revenue growth outlook after posting record profit for last quarter, despite growing market concern about an artificial intelligence (AI) bubble. The company said it expects revenue to expand about 35 percent year-on-year, driven mainly by faster-than-expected demand for leading-edge chips for AI applications. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker in July projected that revenue this year would expand about 30 percent in US dollar terms. The company also slightly hiked its capital expenditure for this year to US$40 billion to US$42 billion, compared with US$38 billion to US$42 billion it set previously. “AI demand actually
RARE EARTHS: The call between the US Treasury Secretary and his Chinese counterpart came as Washington sought to rally G7 partners in response to China’s export controls China and the US on Saturday agreed to conduct another round of trade negotiations in the coming week, as the world’s two biggest economies seek to avoid another damaging tit-for-tat tariff battle. Beijing last week announced sweeping controls on the critical rare earths industry, prompting US President Donald Trump to threaten 100 percent tariffs on imports from China in retaliation. Trump had also threatened to cancel his expected meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in South Korea later this month on the sidelines of the APEC summit. In the latest indication of efforts to resolve their dispute, Chinese state media reported that
RSS