China's smartphone market dropped 14.3% in Q3 2020: IDC

The year 2020 has been a year of turmoil for everyone. The pandemic has not treated anyone with kindness. Now, a new report gives us more insights into the smartphone sales in China. A report by research firm IDC says that smartphone market in China dropped by 14.3% in the third quarter

The report says that 84.8 million smartphones were shipped in China in the third quarter of 2020, which is 14.3% less year-on-year (YoY). The research firm says that this decrease in shipment is a result of a series of factors, which includes soft demand, Huawei’s supply constraints, and delayed flagship launches from both Huawei and Apple.

China has so far shipped a total of 117 million 5G handsets since 2019, with 49.7 million in 2020 Q3 alone. The report by IDC notes that Huawei continued to lead the 5G market, while Oppo and Vivo remained in the second and third spots respectively, mainly owing to their 5G devices. Xiaomi ranked fourth, followed by Realme, which launched several new 5G models in September in both online and offline channels.

Furthermore, Huawei, Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi and Apple remained the top five smartphone vendors in China in the third quarter of 2020 with the five companies shipping 35.1 million, 15 million, 14.1 million, 11 million and 7 million devices during the time.

While Huawei, Vivo, Oppo and Apple reported a negative year-on-year growth, Xiaomi, on the other, reported 13.4% positive growth. Interestingly, as per a separate IDC report, Xiaomi reported a similar growth trajectory in terms of global smartphone sales in Q3 2020. Xiaomi sold 46.5 million smartphones, while Apple sold 41.6 million smartphones in the third quarter of the year.

"The escalated US trade restrictions in August ultimately impeded Huawei's momentum in its home market. Nevertheless, the ban did not cool off the enthusiasm of local Huawei loyalists that supported Huawei's market share to stay above the 40% mark," Will Wong, Research Manager for Client Devices at IDC Asia-Pacific said in a statement.