Chinese Domestic Mobile Phone Shipments Fall Sharply in Q1 2020

China’s smartphone market shipped about 66 million units in the first quarter of 2020, down 20.3% year-on-year, according to a quarterly mobile phone tracking report released by international data company IDC on May 8.

The report showed that the shipments of Huawei, Vivo, OPPO, Xiaomi, Apple and other mobile phone brands all declined to varying degrees in the first quarter. Among them, Huawei saw the smallest decline in mobile phone shipments, at 4.4%, while Xiaomi saw the largest decline, down 33.8% year-on-year. Vivo and OPPO declined by 24.5% and 15.8% respectively, while Apple saw a year-on-year decline of 12.2%.

Despite the impact, IDC said the figure was generally better than expected. A number of agencies had predicted that the domestic mobile phone market would decline by 40% to 50% in the first quarter.

In the first quarter of this year, about 14.5 million domestic 5G mobile phones were shipped, accounting for 21.8% of the overall market, an increase of 64% from the previous quarter. Huawei currently holds 55.4% of China’s market share for 5G phones, with Vivo, OPPO, Xiaomi and Samsung accounting for 14.4%, 13.9%, 13.3% and 1.8%, respectively.