While the world’s top smartphone market research firms can’t seem to agree on the name of last year’s biggest global vendor, Canalys is out today with a new report that makes it pretty clear who won the great Chinese battle of 2024.
Apple couldn’t even take last year’s silver medal
Vivo managed to top the Chinese board in 2024, relatively closely followed by Huawei and Apple.
Huawei’s 37 percent progress in yearly sales from 33.5 to 46 million units easily exceeds Vivo’s own solid growth of 11 percent between 2023 and 2024 while absolutely crushing Apple, Oppo, and Honor’s shrinking numbers. Of the three, Apple saw its figures drop by the largest margin, and if iPhone popularity doesn’t quickly bounce back in China, both Oppo and Honor have a good chance at taking home the bronze medal this year.
In terms of market share, the podium battle was so incredibly close that Apple, Oppo, and Honor effectively ended 2024 in a three-way tie, with Vivo and Huawei not very far ahead either. Interestingly, the “others” group jumped from a combined total of 55.3 million unit shipments in 2023 to 61.6 million in 2024, crucially helping the Chinese market grow by 4 percent after two consecutive years of painful declines.
This graph illustrates the incredibly close battle between the top five vendors even better.
That’s certainly not a massive improvement, boosting regional sales from 272.5 to 284.6 million units, but it’s definitely better than no improvement at all, and intriguingly, it might beat this year’s progress, which is currently predicted to take the market to only a little over 290 million units.
The iPhone 16 series didn’t exactly sell like hotcakes in Q4
At first glance, Apple can find a little solace for its disappointing full-year Chinese sales result in its Q4-leading 13.1 million unit tally. But when you consider iPhones had an 8 percent market share advantage over Honor handsets in the final three months of 2023, it’s hard to view the microscopic edge registered between October and December 2024 as a true victory for Apple.
That’s a super-narrow win for Apple, and it certainly doesn’t offset the company’s overall 2024 loss in China.
Interestingly, Huawei was not the quarter’s best performer, yielding that honor to Xiaomi, which however couldn’t break into the year’s top five vendors group despite remarkably achieving four consecutive quarters of market share growth in 2024.
