China Smartphone Market Recovered by 1% YoY in Q1 2024, with 63.3 million Units Shipped

China smartphone shipments increased by 1% YoY in Q1 2024, reaching 63.3 million unit. This ended an 11 consecutive quarters of annual decline. The recovery is partly attributed to a disappointing Q1 2023. It was also driven by local vendors resuming normal product launch cycles and inventory building activities.

However, consumer demand in China remains weak due to economic pressures. Chinese vendors are focusing on on-device AI for differentiation and monetization, but it remains to be seen whether this will stimulate short-term demand.

Vendor-wise, the market shares of top four vendors – OPPO/OnePlus, Honor, Huawei, and vivo – are closely matched. OPPO/OnePlus led the Chinese smartphone market with a 16.9% share. Honor, Huawei, and vivo followed closely with 16.7%, 16.6%, and 16.1% market shares, ranking second, third, and fourth, respectively. Xiaomi is in the fifth position with a 15.0% market share, while Apple, with a 13.7% share, fell out of the top five list. The top six smartphone vendors combined held 95.1% of the market share, up from 93.7% a year ago, indicating an increased concentration in the market. Other small vendors in China continued to face strong challenges in local market, suffering from limited scale and channel presence. Meizu, for instance, announced this quarter that they would shift focus from traditional smartphone business to new AI hardware.