In Q2 2025, smartphone shipments in China fell 4% YoY to 69M; Huawei reclaimed the top spot after over four years with an 18.1% share, followed by Vivo's 17.3%
Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, China's smartphone market shipped 69.0 million units in 2Q25, marking a 4.0% year-on-year (YoY) decline.
Context & Ripple Effects
Huawei’s return to first place follows a volatile recent leadership picture: Xiaomi led in the prior quarter’s shipment ranking, while Huawei had already reached an 18.1% share in Q4 2024 amid Apple’s decline.
The Q2 result matters because it combines a contracting unit market with a narrow lead over Vivo. Earlier 2024 coverage had also recorded Huawei’s rapid sales growth as the broader market declined, making the company’s recovery in the rankings part of an established shift rather than an isolated quarterly move.
First-order effects
- Huawei becomes China’s top smartphone vendor for the first time in more than four years, with an 18.1% share; Vivo is immediately displaced to second at 17.3%.
- The 4% year-on-year decline to 69M units means vendors are competing for leadership in a smaller market, not simply benefiting from market expansion.
Second-order effects
- The slim Huawei-Vivo gap raises the importance of product cycles, channel execution and pricing discipline for the leading domestic vendors, since modest share changes can alter the ranking.
- Other vendors face a tougher path to gain share: with total shipments down, volume gains by the leaders generally require rivals to surrender units or share.
Third-order effects
- If this pattern persists, China’s handset market may become more defined by recurring contests among domestic leaders than by a stable single-vendor hierarchy.
- Continued shipment weakness would make market-share resilience a more consequential indicator than absolute unit growth, increasing pressure on vendors to defend profitable segments rather than pursue volume alone.
The trend: China’s smartphone market is moving toward intensified share competition among domestic leaders as uneven demand makes quarterly leadership more fluid.