Huawei regains leadership in the Chinese market and pushes Apple to third place

A Huawei regained leadership of the Chinese smartphone market in the first quarter of this year. The information was confirmed by IDC in a report published this Thursday.

According to numbers collected from retail and official channels, Huawei is technically tied with Honor, as it has a 17.1% share and Huawei has 17%.

However, what draws attention is the rapid growth of both, as Huawei reaches 110% and Honor 13.2%, with the companies being basically the only ones to grow at the beginning of 2024.

Foldable devices and the Honor Magic 6 were responsible for Honor’s growth, while the Mate 60 and Nova 12 lines continue to pull Huawei. Previously united, companies now compete for leadership.

See the data in the table below:

The third position is occupied by OPPO and Apple in a technical tie where the first has a 15.7% share and the second has 15.6%. Both saw a drop in sales, with OPPO recording 15.5% and Apple 6.6%.

In the last survey, Apple led the Chinese market.

Finally, vivo occupies fifth place, with a 14.6% share and an annual drop of 10.7%. According to market analysts, despite having supply problems, Huawei has caused other companies to lose sales in China.

While OPPO and vivo are affected by mid-range smartphones, Apple faces competition from the Mate 60 line. In total numbers, the Chinese market sold 69.26 million smartphones in the first quarter of this year.

This represents growth of 6.5% compared to the same period last year, indicating that the smartphone segment has fully recovered from the problems generated post-pandemic.