Apple Inc lost its status as the best-selling smartphone brand in the crucial Chinese market last year, new data showed on Thursday, with a pair of local rivals surpassing it with surging shipments.
The California-based tech giant claimed a market share of 15 percent in the world’s number two economy, behind Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) 16 percent and top-ranking Vivo Communication Technology Co’s (維沃) 17 percent, according to industry data provider Canalys.
Also coming in at 15 percent, with total smartphone sales narrowly behind Apple’s, were Chinese brands Oppo Mobile Telecommunications Corp (歐珀) and Honor Device Co (榮耀), the data showed.
Photo: AFP
Apple’s performance in the country is suffering from a slump in iPhone sales, which dropped to 42.9 million last year, compared with a market-leading 51.8 million the previous year.
“Intense competition has led to a constantly shifting landscape,” Canalys research manager Amber Liu (劉藝璇) said, adding that Apple “faced growing competitive pressure from domestic flagship devices.”
Top-ranked Vivo showed “strong momentum” last year, Liu said, adding that the firm’s strategy was helping “solidify its position in entry-level to mid-to-high-end segments.”
Meanwhile, Huawei, a Shenzhen-based tech giant that was once the target of tough sanctions from Washington due to national security concerns, continued a resurgence in its home market last year.
The firm achieved a 37 percent year-on-year jump in total smartphone shipments last year, the Canalys data showed.
Apple’s iPhone remains popular in China, but many consumers in the vast market have switched to domestic alternatives in recent years as sector competition intensifies.
Apple CEO Tim Cook visited China multiple times last year, as the US tech giant sought to shore up slumping sales in the country.
Apple’s fourth-quarter smartphone shipments plunged 25 percent from a year ago, Canalys data showed.
The Chinese smartphone market as a whole expanded five percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter, the report added, with total shipments reaching 77.4 million units.
Beijing last week announced that it would roll out subsidies for individual purchases of certain smartphones, part of a discount scheme it hopes would boost spending as the economy wavers.
The latest policy “has laid the foundation for this year’s market growth,” Canalys research analyst Lucas Zhong (鐘曉磊) said, adding that “vendors have already begun preparations for channels and supply.”
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 from a week earlier, TDCC data showed. The stock price fell 1.34 percent during the same week to close at NT$1,840 (US$57.55). The decline in TSMC’s share price resulted from volatility in global tech stocks, driven by rising international crude oil prices as the war against Iran continues. Dealers said
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
DOMESTIC COMPONENT: Huang identified several Taiwanese partners to be a key part of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin supply chain, including Asustek, Hon Hai and Wistron Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), addressing crowds at the company’s biggest annual event, unveiled a variety of new products while predicting that its flagship artificial intelligence (AI) processors would help generate US$1 trillion in sales through next year. During a two-and-a-half-hour keynote address, Huang announced plans to push deeper into central processing units (CPUs) — Intel Corp’s home turf — and introduced semiconductors made with technology acquired from start-up Groq Inc. The company even said it was developing chips for data centers in outer space. At the heart of Huang’s speech was the message that demand for computing power
OPTIMISTIC: Inflation still has a chance of remaining below the central bank’s 2 percent alert level, as Taiwan’s economy is resilient with healthy exports, the NDC minister said Taiwan’s inflation could exceed 2 percent this year if oil prices continue to surge amid escalating tensions in the Middle East, prompting the government to reassess its economic outlook, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. DGBAS Minister Chen Shu-tzu (陳淑姿) told lawmakers at a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee that the agency’s earlier growth forecast of 1.68 percent in the consumer price index (CPI) and 7.71 percent for GDP this year did not account for the ongoing Middle East conflict and would need revision, if tensions persist. The previous forecast assumed an average international crude price of
RSS