The boom in China’s smartphone market has come to an end due to a sharp decline in demand both in the mainland and abroad.
According to the latest data, China’s smartphone shipments fell 14.7 percent in the second quarter, the fifth consecutive quarterly decline, the Financial Post, an American-based publication, reported.
Analysts believe that the Chinese market is in serious trouble, and under the influence of many factors, the outlook is becoming increasingly bleak.
Earlier this week, a Bloomberg report stated that the Indian government is planning to ban Chinese phones priced below Rs 12,000 in the country.
The move is aimed at pushing the Chinese telecom giant out of the lower end of the world’s second-largest mobile market, the Financial Post reported.
In recent months, the Indian government has been investigating several Chinese smartphone manufacturers in India and how their Indian subsidiaries are laundering money, diverting their profits and money from India to their Chinese offices, to pay lower taxes and duties.
India is the second largest mobile market in the world and will soon become the largest smartphone market in the world. However, the companies that dominate India’s smartphone market are mostly Chinese.
Ever since manufacturers like Xiaomi and Oppo flooded the market for affordable Android devices, Indian mobile manufacturers have been disappointed.
That’s why India is trying to stop Chinese smartphone makers from selling devices cheaper than Rs 12,000, Financial Post reported.
Accordingly data Released by US research firm IDC, smartphone shipments in China fell 14.7 percent to 67.2 million units in the second quarter from a year earlier.
It was the fifth straight quarter of decline in shipments and the second straight quarter of double-digit decline, with major players such as Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo reporting sharp declines in sales, the Financial Post reported.
According to the report, several factors are responsible for the decline. The first factor is attributed to the drastic fall in demand due to the strict “Zero Covid Policy”. China’s severe COVID-19 restrictions are not good for all businesses. The lockdown disrupted retail, logistics and manufacturing.
During the economic downturn, the need to replace mobile phones has greatly reduced and the life cycle of smartphones has become longer and longer.
But the bigger problem is that the Chinese smartphone market is seriously saturated, which could mean the end of China’s more than 10-year smartphone boom, the Financial Post reported.
At the end of last year, there were more than 1.6 billion active mobile phone accounts in China, outpacing a population of 1.4 billion. The penetration rate is much higher than the global average, resulting in intense brand competition.
Canalys, a data analysis firm, predicted in late July that China’s mobile phone shipments this year would fall below 300 million units, the lowest on record in nearly 10 years, the Financial Post reported.
