BEIJING — China’s smartphone shipments fell 4.3 percent to 66 million units in the second quarter (Q2) from a year earlier, as many manufacturers hiked prices to reflect rising memory and component costs, research firm IDC said on Tuesday.
It was the fifth straight quarterly decline, and first-half shipments were down 4.2 percent from a year earlier.Huawei Technologies and Apple were the only vendors to post growth in the quarter, with shipments up 19.4 percent and 24.4 percent, respectively.“Huawei and Apple held their prices steady while competitors were raising theirs, and that gave hesitant buyers a reason to go ahead and purchase in a quarter when most of the market was giving them a reason to wait,” said Arthur Guo, a senior analyst at IDC China.Huawei ranked first with a 22.6-percent market share, while Apple came second with an 18.- percent share. Xiaomi, which ranked fifth, saw its second-quarter shipments down 21.7 percent, with Oppo and Vivo seeing shipments fall 9.7 percent and 11.4 percent, respectively.Most Android vendors raised prices or cut back on budget models in response to surging memory chips and other component costs, discouraging consumers from upgrading. The fading effect of government subsidies also removed a prop that had supported demand in earlier quarters, IDC said.
