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The domestic smartphone market is booming. With technological innovation and brand building, domestic mobile phones have made great strides in design, performance, and price. Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO and other brands continue to launch high-performance, high-quality products, which have won the favor of consumers at home and abroad. At the same time, domestic mobile phones have also made major breakthroughs in the field of 5G technology and are in a leading position in the world. In addition, domestic mobile phones have also enhanced their international competitiveness by continuously expanding overseas markets.
On Wednesday, a report released by Counterpoint Research, a well-known consumer electronics industry research institution, showed that in the global mobile phone market in the past August, Apple was surpassed by the Chinese brand Xiaomi for the first time in 3 years (since August 2021) and fell to the third largest mobile phone brand in the world. According to the report, Xiaomi's smartphone sales were relatively stable in August 2024, while Apple's smartphone sales showed a seasonal decline in the same period, and the rankings of the two sides shifted as a result.
According to Counterpoint Research, there are two main reasons behind this. The first is that Apple's iPhone has historically experienced a seasonal sales off-season before the release of a new device in September. At the same time, although Xiaomi's sales volume was flat in August month-on-month, the Chinese brand is also one of the fastest-growing brands in the first half of 2024, with a year-on-year sales growth rate of 22%. Even if growth slows in the second half of the year due to base effects, Counterpoint expects the brand to still achieve a "strong double-digit percentage" full-year growth.
It is worth mentioning that as early as the second quarter of 2021, Xiaomi surpassed Apple to become the second place in the world. Among them, Xiaomi's shipments in the second quarter of 2021 increased by 83% year-on-year, surpassing Apple in shipments for the first time, ranking second with a market share of 17%, and Apple ranking third with a market share of 14% in shipments.
Xiaomi's smartphone shipments once again surpassed Apple's, which fully illustrates the rapid development of domestic smartphones and the continuous enhancement of international competition. At present, China has become one of the largest smartphone markets in the world. In the long-term development and evolution of the smartphone market, the competition pattern of China's mobile phone market at this stage has gradually formed, that is, the domestic mobile phone camp represented by Huawei, Xiaomi, Honor, OPPO and vivo and the foreign mobile phone brand camp represented by Apple and Samsung.
-- Smartphone market structure
In China's smartphone brand market in 2023, Apple has attracted more consumer demand driven by relatively large price reductions and promotions on third-party channels, ranking first in terms of shipments. followed by Honor, which ranked second in terms of shipments, relying on the excellent performance of folding screen products in the market above $800, and its share increased significantly; OPPO, vivo and Xiaomi ranked third to fifth, respectively.
As of February 2024, Huawei is still the leader in the domestic market, with Apple, Vivo, Xiaomi, and Honor all seeing varying degrees of growth in the number of active devices.
Ankit Malhotra, senior analyst at Counterpoint Research, said that the global smartphone market has entered a new era - a slow and steady growth phase driven by replacement cycles, and it is now a zero-sum game among mobile phone brand manufacturers. We expect smartphone sales to grow slowly in the coming years, however, we expect smartphone revenues to grow faster than sales due to premiumization across regions, especially the rise of new forms and features, such as folding screens and GenAI.
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For more research and analysis of this industry, please refer to the "Analysis Report on Market Demand Forecast and Investment Strategic Planning of China's Smartphone Industry" by Qianzhan Industry Research Institute.
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