Chinese smartphone market continues to be tough for Apple and other foreign brands
A drop in foreign-branded smartphone sales in China continues to hit the iPhone, with the year-on-year dip continuing for the fourth month in a row.

Apple Intelligence's Siri animation on an iPhone
China is a major market for Apple, but the company has had trouble maintaining its position in recent years. A government-affiliated report now indicates the market is even tougher for Apple to compete in.
Data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) indicates that shipments of foreign-branded smartphones in China reached 3.04 million in November. Reuters reports this is a 47.4% drop from the 5.77 million units reported for November 2023.
The data also means that foreign-branded smartphones have seen year-on-year dips in sale for four months in a row. In October, the YoY drop was 44.25%.
The figures should be concerning for Apple, as the iPhone would count as a foreign-branded device for this report. However, this figure is not broken down by vendor, so it's not possible to determine exactly how much Apple's iPhone has been affected.
It does, however, offer a glimpse into consumer sentiment, in preferring domestic producers over foreign brands. Overall smartphone shipments in China, including domestic brands, fell 5.1% year-on-year to 29.61 million units.
It is plausible, though, that other foreign smartphone brands have seen a decline in the country, with Apple working to maintain its position.
In October, IDC said that Apple was the second most popular smartphone brand in China for Q3 2024, with a 15.6% market share dipping just 0.3% year-on-year.
That same month, it was determined that the iPhone 16 range had a better launch period in China than the iPhone 15 did. For the first three weeks of availability, the iPhone 16 was approximately 20% better than the iPhone 15's first three weeks.
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I don't think it is plausible that Apple has managed to maintain sales levels. The only three foreign brands besides Apple with any notable popularity in China are Motorola, Sony, and Samsung, and none of those three are in the millions per month shipped category according to what I'm finding. That drop from 5.77m to 3.04m has to include a chunk of iPhones too.
The iPhone 15 series had to contend with the Huawei Mate 60 series from the outset.
The iPhone 16 series didn't have the same problem as the Mate 70 series wasn't released until November.
Various reports from the likes of IDC etc are now suggesting the increased competition is depressing iPhone 16 sales.
On top of that there are now reports claiming that Apple has extended its discounting to its own sales channels.
Discounting from third party resellers has been constant in China for a couple of generations now.
Seeing as the Christmas season is Apple's blowout quarter, revenues will peak as they always do but obviously discounting from Apple itself has to mean something isn't going as well as expected.
It all started with Trump in 2017 when the US government stepped in to scupper a deal with AT&T and Huawei to distribute its phones via the carrier. The deal was originally inked after both companies spent a year tuning the Huawei modems to AT&T's network. The big announcement was scheduled for CES of the following year and was 'killed' at the last minute (with lorries full of phones already in place within the US) after government pressure.
That said, it did, and in spite of that restriction, top world sales a few years ago by dominating sales in the rest of the world.
A de facto ban by the Chinese has never been off the cards and Tim Cook has spent a lot of time in China trying to keep that side happy.
As a direct result of the ban, HarmonyOS has now come to the fore and, according to reports, displaced iOS in China for the amount of devices running it.
This year, HarmonyOS will also shed Android compatibility and become a 'pure' system. On phones there are also rumours of a worldwide release. It already ships on a plethora of devices worldwide and even a release on PCs and laptops.
A move that will impact Microsoft, Google, Apple and Qualcomm.
Now we have to wait and see how things play out.
For Apple, China is definitely it's biggest concern. The 'car' situation is a particular thorn as thousands of higher end cars (bought by premium users) are shipping with HarmonyOS and seamless integration with all Huawei systems. The same is happening in the mid-range too.
https://www.economist.com/business/2024/08/21/apple-cant-do-cars-meet-the-chinese-tech-giants-that-can