Global Smartphone Shipments Fell by 2.9% in Q1, China Fell Below 100 Million Units

On the evening of May 2, the market intelligence company International Data Corporation (IDC) released a report stating that the global smartphone shipment in Q1 of 2018 was 334.3 million units, a decrease of 2.9% from 344.4 million units in the same period of last year. While shipments of smart phones in the Chinese market fell below 100 million units for the first time since Q3 of 2013.

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According to IDC’s report, in the first quarter of this year, Samsung was still the leader in the global smartphone market. Although shipments fell by 2.4% YoY, Samsung’s market share still reached 23.3%.

The shipment of Apple was 52.2 million in the first quarter, an increase of 2.8% YoY, ranking the second just behind Samsung with a market share of 15.5%. Despite previous news claiming that the iPhone X’s performance was poor, Apple revealed in the just released financial report that the iPhone X is the most popular model in the first quarter.

Huawei’s smart phone shipment was 39.3 million, an increase by 13.8% YoY, and its market share hit a record high of 11.7%, edged closer to Apple. Although Huawei’s high-end products are very popular in the Chinese market, most of the shipment come from low-end and mid-range products so that Huawei introduced many new products accordingly in this market .

Xiaomi’s strong performance in the first quarter mainly benefit from its rapid growth in overseas markets. Xiaomi’s smartphone output volume reached 27.6 million units in the Q1, increasing by 86.4% YoY. As a result, it took up the 8.2% market share and ranked fourth in the world. Xiaomi continues to expanding its retail channels in India and Southeast Asia, but online retailing remains to be the main sales channel for Xiaomi in India. Redmi 5A, a relatively low-end product of Xiaomi, take up for almost two-fifths of the total sales in India.

OPPO ranked fifth. In the first quarter, OPPO’s output volume were 23.9 million units, down 7.5% YoY, with a market share of 7.1%.

As Melissa Chau, associate research director at IDC, puts it: “Globally, as well as in China, a key bellwether, smartphone consumers are trading up to more premium devices, but there are no longer as many new smartphone converts, resulting in shipments dropping. When we look at it from a dollar value perspective, the smartphone market is still climbing and will continue to grow over the years to come as consumers are increasingly reliant on these devices for the bulk of their computing needs.”