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.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
IMAGE SENSORS: The Japanese company would be the controlling shareholder of the venture, with development and production lines to be set up in Kumamoto Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corp to create a joint venture to develop and produce next-generation images sensors. The partnership seeks to explore and address emerging opportunities in physical artificial intelligence (AI) applications, such as automotive and robotics, paving the way for innovations and expanded technological advancements, TSMC said in a statement. Sony would be the majority and controlling shareholder of the joint venture, the statement said, adding that the company would set up development and production lines in its newly constructed fab in Kumamoto Prefecture’s
RSS