Apple has lost its crown as China's best-selling smartphone maker: report

• Apple is no longer the top-selling smartphone maker in China, per Counterpoint Research.
• In 2023, the iPhone became the best-selling smartphone in China for the first time.
• Now, Apple lags behind Vivo, Huawei, and Honor.

Apple's iPhone sales in China fell by 24% in the first six weeks of 2024, according to a new report released by market research firm Counterpoint Research.

The drop in sales means the iPhone has lost its position as the best-selling smartphone in China, a status it attained for the first time in 2023.

In 2023, Apple held 19% of the market share in China. That's now down to 15.7%, per Counterpoint.

Vivo, a Chinese tech multinational, is now the top-selling smartphone maker in China, per Counterpoint Research. The data was released as part of Counterpoint's China Smartphone Weekly Sell-through Tracker. Bloomberg first reported the news.

Vivo is followed by Huawei, Honor, and Apple in fourth. Honor split from Huawei in 2020.

"Primarily, it faced stiff competition at the high end from a resurgent Huawei while getting squeezed in the middle on aggressive pricing from the likes of OPPO, Vivo, and Xiaomi," Mengmeng Zhang, a senior analyst at Counterpoint, said of the iPhone.

Smartphone sales in China at large are down 7% year over year, Counterpoint reported.

Apple's sales decline in China is the latest of its woes in the region.

In January, Chinese chipmakers drew up plans to create chip production lines to supply processors to local smartphone makers. The move stands to hurt Apple, which has so far benefited from tight export restrictions. The American manufacturer may also be suffering from a slowdown in general consumption and a shift towards supporting homegrown companies in China.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.

March 5, 4:28 p.m. SGT: An earlier version of this story misstated the scale of Apple's sales decline in China. Sales are down 24% in the first six weeks of 2024, not year over year.