China smartphone market slumps to 10-year low in 2022 • TechCrunch | Guard Tech

After a decade of frenzied progress, China’s smartphone market is experiencing a stoop as COVID-19 rattles the world’s second-largest economic system.

The nation’s smartphone shipments fell 14% year-over-year in 2022, hitting a 10-year low, in keeping with analysis agency Counterpoint. It was additionally the primary time that cell phone gross sales in China fell under 300 million items in ten years, in keeping with Canalys. Even in December, which has traditionally seen seasonal jumps in gross sales, China posted a 5% quarter-over-quarter decline in smartphone shipments.

The strict three-year “COVID zero” coverage that disrupted enterprise and sapped shopper confidence, coupled with macroeconomic headwinds, spelled the top of China’s years of double-digit progress. The issues escalated when the abrupt leisure of COVID-19 restrictions in early December resulted in a spike in instances, additional placing strain on the declining economic system. Final 12 months, China’s GDP grew by 3%, its lowest degree in many years aside from 2020.

Alibaba’s annual buying bonanza in November provided some clues to China’s weakening buying energy. The occasion, typically in comparison with Black Friday and seen as a gauge of the nation’s shopper urge for food, didn’t reveal its last 2022 gross sales determine for the primary time since its inception in 2009.

There was a winner on this bleak time. Apple ended the 12 months with a document 18% market share because of “its aggressive promotions” and “resilient” demand within the high-end phase in China, in keeping with Canalys. Its rise additionally coincides with Huawei’s fall from grace within the premium telephone market since US sanctions minimize off its entry to high-end chipsets.

Apple’s relationship with China stays delicate. The nation just isn’t solely considered one of its largest markets, but it surely has been the spine of the manufacturing that created essentially the most beneficial firm on the planet in the present day. Nonetheless, lately, COVID-related disruptions, comparable to a uncommon employee protest at a serious Foxconn plant that delayed manufacturing, prompted the {hardware} big to rethink its provide chain technique. The Wall Road Journal reported in early December that Apple was seeking to transfer a few of its provide chains out of China to different components of Asia, together with Vietnam and India.

India, specifically, is anticipated to play a much bigger position in Apple’s provide chains as the corporate plans to broaden its manufacturing capability within the nation to supply 25% of all iPhones by 2025, in keeping with JP analysts. Morgan.

Within the fourth quarter, the highest smartphone manufacturers in China by cargo had been Apple, Vivo, Oppo, Honor (which was spun off from Huawei following US sanctions on the mother or father firm), and Xiaomi.