© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Mobile phones are seen on display at an electronics market in Shanghai, China, June 24, 2015. Picture taken June 24, 2015. REUTERS/Aly Song
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Smartphone sales in China fell 13% on-year in 2022, the industry’s biggest drop in a decade as consumers spent cautiously, market research firm IDC said on Sunday.
The total number of devices shipped was 286 million, up from 329 million in 2022.
That meant the total sales volume for 2022 was the lowest since 2013 and the first time since then that annual sales fell below 300 million, IDC said in a report.
Android phone maker Vivo was the best-selling brand during the year, with a market share of 18.6%. However, its total shipments fell 25.1% year-on-year.
Honor ranked as the second best-selling brand, with shipments growing by more than 34%, albeit from a low base.
Apple Inc (NASDAQ:) was the third best-selling phone brand in 2022, tied with Oppo.
Apple’s total sales fell 4.4% year-on-year, far outpacing the market slowdown.
In the fourth quarter, despite being the best-selling brand in the three-month period, year-over-year sales of iPhones remained down as supply chain issues caused by worker unrest at the iPhone plant manufacturer Foxconn in the city of Zhengzhou worsened worse than expected demand, the researchers wrote.
China’s strict COVID-19 controls, ramped up in the spring of 2022 in several cities, weighed heavily on its economy, which plunged to one of its worst levels in nearly half a century last year.
The drop in smartphone sales in China mirrored the sector’s performance globally. In 2022, global smartphone shipments reached 1.2 billion, the lowest level since 2013 and a year-on-year drop of more than 11%, according to IDC.
