In one of the tightest smartphone races that I've ever seen in Mainland China, Huawei rocketed to number one with a 70% shipment surge year-over-years with Apple falling 25% to land them in fifth spot behind OPPO, HONOR and vivo.

A new Canalys report states that "Mainland China smartphone market has finally seen a rebound after two years, with a Q1 2024 shipment of 67.7 million units. Significantly, Huawei returned to the top spot after 13 quarters, shipping 11.7 million smartphones and capturing a 17% market share, thanks to an enthusiastic market response to its Mate and nova series.

Apple declined the most among the top five, with 10.0 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 25%. The difference between second and fifth spot was less than 1%."  

(Click on Chart to Enlarge)

Canalys Senior Analyst Toby Zhu: "The mainland China market's growth is still behind the global recovery of 11%, which allowed Huawei to seize market share and reclaim the crown quickly. This month Huawei also upgraded the P series to Pura 70, featuring an innovative pop-out camera lens, further sparking market interest. A key strategy for Huawei in 2024 is to focus on building AI capabilities for smart devices from hardware to software at a system level, leveraging its deep R&D capabilities in AI infrastructure and solutions for industry and enterprise customers."

Canalys Research Manager Amber Liu: "Despite Huawei's strong start, we maintain the modest recovery forecast for overall market performance in 2024 growing at 1%. The talking point within the industry surrounds intensifying competition and innovation moat building. Leading vendors are narrowing their market share, which means exploring growth opportunities in different channels is critical to capture short-term opportunities. Vendors' go-to-market capabilities in multi-channel management, price control, and inventory management will be tested.

"The Gen AI-capable smartphone presents important opportunities for Chinese vendors to differentiate in the high-end in 2024 to challenge Apple in their home market," said Canalys Research Analyst Lucas Zhong. "Canalys forecasts Gen AI-capable smartphones (excluding iPhones with A17 Pro) will reach 12% of shipments in 2024 in mainland China, ahead of the global average of 9%. Vendors are actively engaging consumers by developing interesting AI use cases and integrating AI features into their latest flagship launches with large marketing spends to educate consumers." For more, read the full report by Canalys

With second to fifth spots so incredibly tight, the difference against Apple could have been foldables. Apple is the only vendor in the top five without a premium foldable smartphone.

It should be noted that Analyst firm Counterpoint placed Apple Third in China for Q1-24 and Huawei in fourth spot on April 23, 2024. It's not known if the Counterpoint report covered "Mainland China + Hong Kong," as the report didn't specify. One-China today means Mainland + Hong Kong. So reporting on just the Mainland statistics is incomplete and slanted in favor of Huawei. In One-China, Huawei was fourth.