Big in China: Apple leads the world’s biggest smartphone market for the first time ever،
If you're wondering how Apple managed to beat Samsung for the top spot in global smartphone shipments in 2023, even though it's not in the top five in the world's second most populous country, the answer comes (at least in part) of… the largest country by population.
China also happens to be the biggest smartphone market of all, so it really can't be overstated how Apple's crucial advantage over its main rival in these areas must have proven itself in the grand scheme of things. things.
Samsung, mind you, remains completely unable to break into the region, once again failing to carve out a place among its five largest smartphone suppliers.
in the fourth quarter of 2023 and all of last year.
What an incredibly close competition!
You know how Samsung surpassed Xiaomi's global smartphone shipments by around a whopping 80 million units in 2023, despite the two companies occupying second and third place respectively in the latest IDC tracker? Well, there are certainly no such gaps in China between the top five suppliers, making it an even more compact group than India.
The latest annual difference between Apple and Xiaomi amounts to just over four percentage points when it comes to Chinese market share, which may not seem very small… until you realize that we let's talk about the country's gold medalist and the fifth greatest. seller at the end of last year.
Naturally, the gap between Apple and silver and bronze medalists Honor and Oppo is much smaller, at 0.2 and 0.6 percent respectively, while Vivo also follows very closely in fourth place. But iPhones are for the first time in history the most popular types of smartphones in China, and that's clearly an absolutely stunning achievement, made all the more impressive by the fact that these other four major brands hail from the world's most populous country.
The same obviously applies to Huawei, which failed to finish the year in the top five, but achieved a well-deserved fourth place in the fourth quarter, overtaking Oppo and Xiaomi after a remarkable 36.2% increase. sales over one year. It was the only brand in the top five to see real progress not only in the last three months of the year, but also in 2023 as a whole. So Apple's new supremacy could be challenged very soon by a company that has been to hell and back over the past few months. years.
What's on the (Chinese) horizon?
To be able to (more or less) accurately predict the future of the market, you need to understand its present and recent past very well. For example, it is extremely important to note that China's 271.3 million total smartphone sales in 2023 represent a 5% decline from the 2022 figure.
Equally important, the region experienced ten (!!!) consecutive quarters of year-over-year declines before to recover heading towards recovery with slight but notable growth of 1.2% over the period October-December 2023.
This gives everyone a pretty realistic hope that shipments will increase significantly throughout 2024, which could benefit all of China's top five smartphone vendors, as well as Huawei and the “other” companies that actually increased their (combined) numbers in 2023p.
Honor, for example, is well-positioned to move forward thanks to its already quite successful high-end foldable lineup and multiple popular low-to-mid-range Android devices. For its part, Apple could well use a little luck, a crazy success
iPhone 16 family and perhaps a new budget iPhone SE
to maintain its newly acquired leadership position in the incredibly competitive Chinese market. But even if that doesn't happen, this 2023 feat will undoubtedly remain a landmark for the ages (and the history books).
