Image Source : China Visual

BEIJING, January 30 (TMTPOST) — China’s smartphone sales dropped by 13.2 percent to the lowest level in a decade, due to the Covid restrictions and consumers’ shrinking desires in an economic slowdown, according to a report by the data provider IDC.

The total shipments reached 285.8 million, down from 329.3 million in 2021. It was the first time that the figure was lower than 300 million for the past decade.

“The historically low shipments raise an alarm bell for smartphone vendors to rethink how to build a more sustainable business model and a more targeted marketing strategy,” said Will Wong, a senior research manager at IDC Asia/Pacific.

The top five players in China’s smartphone market were vivo, Honor, OPPO, Apple and Xiaomi, with a combined market share of 84 percent. Compared with 2021, vivo remained the top one seller, while Honor moved from the fifth to replace OPPO as the second.

Honor was also the only brand that achieved a year-on-year growth rate of 34.4 percent because of a low comparison base year in 2022 and its aggressive product portfolio development. Apple’s sales declined by 4.4 percent, ranking the second in terms of year-on-year increase. Its success came from the production recovery in the fourth quarter of last year as well as the Double 11 shopping festival.

The global smartphone market witnessed a decline of 10.4 percent last year. The last quarter of 2022 saw the largest quarterly drop in sales since 2013 due to significantly dampened consumer demand, inflation, and economic uncertainties, as IDC showed.

"We have never seen shipments in the holiday quarter come in lower than the previous quarter. However, weakened demand and high inventory caused vendors to cut back drastically on shipments," said Nabila Popal, the research director with IDC ' s Worldwide Tracker team.