Apple has a big problem in China, and it's only getting worse
Apple had a spectacular 2023 in global smartphone shipments, surpassing Samsung (and everyone else) for an entire year for the first time ever, but while it may seem a little early to jump to conclusions, 2024 is shaping up to be a significantly worse year for iPhone sales.
That's because said sales figures have fallen off a cliff in January and February in China, according to local state data cited by Bloomberg today. Granted, that's only two months and one country, but the decline during those two months looks bad enough to compromise the company's full-year performance in the world's single biggest smartphone market.
We're talking a massive 33 percent drop from 3.6 million units in February 2023 to just 2.4 mil last month, which came after a shocking 39 percent fall from no less than 9 million shipments in China in January 2023 to a measly 5.5 million units during the first 31 days of 2024.
That brings Apple's regional sales total for the first two months of this year to under 8 million units, compared to a then-towering 12.6 million in January and February of last year. iPhones managed to top the Chinese market in both Q1 2023 and at the end of 2023, mind you, narrowly beating Honor, Oppo, and Vivo's Android armies, which is probably safe to assume will not happen again in 2024.
Instead of those three brands, Huawei is widely expected to return to a domestic number one position it last held a few years ago. The resurgent Chinese company will likely climb the global chart as well in 2024, although we highly doubt its Western results will be strong enough to match Apple or Samsung's worldwide shipment tallies.
On the other hand, China's entire smartphone market looks to be in a world of trouble at the moment, losing "almost a third" of its February 2023 sales in February 2024. Overall growth is somehow still predicted for "the course of the year", although Apple is unlikely to get in on that trend, with iPhone shipments instead expected to "keep deteriorating."
For what it's worth, the Cupertino-based tech giant remains China's only "major foreign player", which may not provide much consolation if iPhones become less popular than their Huawei, Honor, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi-branded rivals in the region.
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