iPhone 16 with the Chinese flag
Apple’s iPhone sales in China reportedly took a tumble at the end of 2024, with a considerable reduction in sales putting it in a dead heat with homegrown Xiaomi.
The iPhone 16 has struggled in China since launch, but there was hope holiday shopping would improve its standing in the important territory. It seems that hope was misplaced.
According to analysis by Counterpoint, Apple’s position in China got weaker in the fourth quarter of 2024. In a year-on-year market share comparison, Apple saw its sales fall 18.2% compared to Q4 2023.
The overall market share in the region for Apple now resides at 17.1%, putting Apple in third place behind Huawei (18.1%) and just behind Xiaomi (17.2%). Both of the rival firms saw increases, with Huawei growing its sales 15.5% year-on-year.
Apple’s position is a considerable drop from Q4 2023, when it had a 20.2% market share and topped the Chinese smartphone market.
Smartphone brand market share in China Q4 2023 and Q4 2024 – Image Credit: Counterpoint
The reduction in Apple’s position is also worse than just the market share. The overall China smartphone market declined year-on-year by 3.2%, the only quarter to do so in 2024.
Counterpoint also released annual market share figures for the China smartphone market, and it was also bad news for Apple. In 2023, it had a 17.9% overall share, but Apple dropped down to 15.5% in 2024.
Apple endured an overall 12.6% decline in sales for 2024 over 2023’s figures, which brought it down to fourth place in the market overall. Vivo leads with 17.8%, with Huawei at 16.3% and Xiaomi at 15.7%.
Analysts believe China’s smartphone market will continue to have single-digit growth in 2025. This will in part be aided by a national smartphone subsidy program announced in January, which should help boost sales.
It is unclear where the Counterpoint Market Pluse Service sourced its data, so its absolute accuracy is unknown. However, it does seem to correlate with other reports on the topic.
While Apple does offer insights as well as an overall figure for global iPhone sales in its quarterly reports, it does not offer more granular details. For example, we know Apple’s revenue from China for the quarter, but not how much of it was from iPhone sales.
Short of Apple offering more accurate financial details, reports such as those from Counterpoint and other analysts are the only real way to know how Apple is faring in China.
Continued bad news
Counterpoint’s report is only the latest to say that Apple’s having a hard time in China at the moment. Although, not every news story in the region is dour.
In October, an IDC report saw Apple return to a list of the top five smartphone producers in China for Q3 2024, a small dip of 0.3% from the same time the previous year. It was also claimed that the iPhone 16 had seen a 20% jump in sales in China over its predecessor, the iPhone 15, in the same quarter.
At the same time, the major sales of Singles Day was reported in November to be extremely bad for Apple. It apparently saw a double-digit percentage year-on-year decline for the sales period, even with a rare early discount on the new models.
Even the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology pointed out in January that sales of foreign-branded smartphones has continued to decline. While not singling Apple out, that category of smartphone saw year-on-year dips in sale for four months in a row.
There was also an expectation that Apple Intelligence would help Apple secure sales around the world. However, that hasn’t helped in China at all, because Apple Intelligence isn’t available in the region yet.
Apple is expecting to roll out support in China at some point, but regulatory pressures means it has to source assistance from other major tech companies in the country. It has reportedly talked to ByteDance and Tencent to use their AI models, but there has not been any official word of a launch in the immediate future.
With rivals already capitalizing on providing AI services, Apple has a long way to catch up. Launching Apple Intelligence in the country could go a long way to clawing back iPhone sales in a region Apple is keen to succeed within.
