In a sign China’s smartphone market may be closer to bottoming out, its sales fell 3% YoY in Q3 2023, narrowing the YoY decline sequentially.

During Q3 2023, the performance of most leading OEMs except Huawei was lackluster. On the back of the Kirin SoC’s return, Huawei launched the Mate 60 Pro suddenly at the end of August. It has made a huge splash in the market, contributing big to Huawei’s smartphone sales growth of 37% YoY in Q3 2023. Huawei is striving to ramp up production to catch up with the demand, according to Counterpoint’s Senior Analyst Ivan Lam.

Apple, OPPO and vivo experienced double-digit decreases in sales. Lam said, “iPhone sales declined due to earlier-than-expected price cuts by channels, which were not offset by the official price adjustment. This was compounded by initial supply constraints faced by the iPhone 15 series, which resulted in lower sales compared to the iPhone 14 series for the launch period.

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HONOR led the market with an 18.3% share largely driven by the newly launched HONOR X50 and HONOR 90. Xiaomi increased YoY on the back of strong sales of the Redmi K and Note series driven by competitive promotional prices. On the slight increase in these two brands’ market share, Research Analyst Alicia Gong said, “Both HONOR and Xiaomi are focusing on offering more affordable mid-range products with promotional prices to both retailers and consumers to offset any potential downward pressure. This strategy has proven to be effective.”