iPhone sales in China fell 19.1% YoY to a 15.7% share in Q1 2024; Vivo fell 0.4% YoY to 17.4%, Honor rose 11.5% YoY to 16.1%, and Huawei rose 69.7% YoY to 15.5%
- China's smartphone sales grew 1.5% YoY and 4.6% QoQ in Q1 2024, marking the second consecutive quarter of positive YoY growth.
Context & Ripple Effects
China's smartphone market had been weak, but Huawei was already gaining while Apple and other major brands were declining in the first six weeks of 2024. This quarter-level result shows that the competitive reshuffle persisted even as total market demand returned to year-over-year growth.
The result also extends the post-Mate 60 pattern in which Huawei was the fastest-growing major vendor and Apple was losing ground in late 2023 after Huawei's Mate 60 launch.
First-order effects
- Apple's iPhone business loses share in a Chinese market that is growing again, while Huawei and Honor increase their relative positions.
- Vivo remains the quarterly share leader, but its nearly flat sales growth leaves it with less momentum than Huawei and Honor.
Second-order effects
- Apple faces a more difficult competitive environment: market growth is not translating into iPhone volume growth, while domestic rivals are capturing a larger portion of replacement demand.
- Huawei's rapid growth raises competitive pressure on Vivo, Honor and Apple alike; the closely clustered shares make rank changes more sensitive to each vendor's subsequent sales performance.
Third-order effects
- If sustained, the shift would make China's premium and upper-midrange smartphone market less dependent on a single foreign challenger and more contested among domestic brands, especially Huawei, Honor and Vivo.
- Later coverage indicates the pattern remained consequential: Huawei ultimately reclaimed China's top smartphone position in Q2 2025. That does not establish a permanent ranking, but it reinforces that the Q1 2024 movement was part of a broader competitive reset.
The trend: China's smartphone recovery is coinciding with a durable rebalancing of share toward domestic OEMs and away from Apple.