China’s smartphone market is not looking good in its first quarter

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‘China’ is known to be one of the most major increasing drivers for global smartphone market in previous years, however tides are turning for china and things are kind of falling apart for them. Observers tend to view China and its market as a never ending supply of potential customers and as a developing market of vital importance to most companies. But according to the latest figures from the market research firm IDC, smartphone growth in ‘China’ has contracted for the first time in six years. It sounds more like ‘declined’ for the first time in six years.

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Smartphone shipments started to fall in Q1 2015 by 4 percent compared to the same quarter last year, with shipments totaling 98.8 million. Comparing data from this quarter to Q4 2014, the research firm states that shipments have fallen by 8 percent. That’s means there were 5 million smartphones that did not get sold during this first quarter of 2015, despite the fact that some companies saw very strong growth.

Kitty Fok, managing director at IDC China said on report, “China is often thought of as an emerging market but the reality is that the vast majority of phones sold in China today are smartphones, similar to other mature markets like the US, UK, Australia, and Japan. Just like these markets, convincing existing users as well as feature phone users to upgrade to new smartphones will now be the key to further growth in the China market.”

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Leading the pack, both in terms of sales and growth, is none other than Apple, whose iPhone 6 and 6 Plus handsets proved to be smashing hits across the world. The American company managed to sell 14.5 million smartphones in the first three months of the year for a total of 14.7% market share in country. That’s up from 8.9 million respectively 8.7%, representing a year over year growth of more than 62%. In other words, Apple is doing very well in one of the largest markets on Earth.

Meanwhile, Xiaomi is still a strong contender and took second place on this chart, with 42.3% yearly growth and a 13.7% overall market share in China. Huawei comes in third, while Samsung and Lenovo, both of whom were at number one last year in different quarters, are now rounding up the bottom of the chart. Samsung had the biggest problems, selling 11 million phones fewer compared to this time last year, a contraction of over 50% and a decline in market share of almost 11 percentage points.

Finally the Chinese market as a whole seems poised to not only slow down but actually contract further, with very strong competition from companies both outside and inside the country. China’s demand for smartphones may be slowing but the market itself is still very much open to change.

Zaid is a technology enthusiast who is interested in covering the latest tits and bits happening around.

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