Huawei regains the crown in the world’s biggest smartphone market

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Huawei has regained the crown in the world’s biggest smartphone market. IDC published the findings for the first quarter of 2024 for the Chinese smartphone market, and Huawei is very much back.

Huawei has managed to regain its crown in the world’s biggest smartphone market

The company is technically the second-biggest smartphone manufacturer in the country as of now, but… there’s a catch. HONOR, Huawei’s former company, holds 17.1% of the market, with Huawei trailing it by only 0.1%. In other words, Huawei grabbed 17% of the market in Q1 2024.

IDC China Q1 2024

With that in mind, Huawei’s growth YoY has been 110%, compared to HONOR’s 13.2% growth. Huawei held 8.6% of the market in Q1 2023, while HONOR had 16.1% of the market. Having this growth pattern in mind, Huawei will jump over HONOR any day now, if it hasn’t already.

Just to be clear, both companies did great in the last year. Both had considerable growth, but Huawei trumped everyone in its home market in the last year, and it’s not even close. The company’s phone regained 5G capability, starting with the Mate 60 flagships last year. Those phones have been flying off the shelves.

Having all that in mind, it’s save to say that Huawei retained its crown. It will regain the first spot officially any day now, it has by far the highest growth rate out of any other company, and Huawei also launched its new flagships very recently. On top of that, IDC marked both HONOR and Huawei as first-placed.

OPPO, Apple & Vivo all lost market share in China in the last year

The third-placed company, based on IDC’s findings, is OPPO with 15.7%. OPPO’s market share actually fell 15.5% YoY, mainly due to Huawei’s success. That goes for the other two companies as well.

Apple is very close to OPPO with 15.6% of the market. Apple has also seen a decline in China, though. Based on IDC’s numbers, Apple lose 6.6% of the market compared to Q1 2023.

The last company on the top 5 list is Vivo with 14.6% of the market. Vivo also lost ground compared to a year ago, as it declined 10.7%. Not as much as OPPO, but still, it’s a considerable decline.

All the other companies collectively gained 4.8% of the market, and hold the remaining 20.1% of the market. The Chinese market in total grew by 6.5%.

2024-04-25 15:06:19