Apple Inc’s iPhone sales slump in China is deepening and the company is likely to see volumes decline further this year, Jefferies analysts led by Edison Lee (李裕生) said.
The iPhone maker’s latest generation got off to an atypically sluggish start in China last year, which most recently expanded to a 30 percent year-on-year decline, Lee and colleagues said in a note on Sunday, citing industry checks.
The rest of the country’s mobile market grew last month, with Huawei Technologies Co (華為) growing the fastest on the back of its new Mate 60 device lineup.
Photo: Bloomberg
Weeks before the iPhone 15 went on sale in September last year, Huawei’s debut of the Mate 60 Pro — which runs on a new made-in-China system processor — spurred a patriotic fervor that reclaimed some of the customers it previously lost to Apple.
Jefferies estimates that Huawei shipped 35 million smartphones last year, with some supply constraints preventing that number from being larger.
Apple saw a double-digit percentage fall in volume last month and Jefferies forecasts a similar decline for this year.
Discounts on Apple’s smartphone range increased last week across various online shopping portals, cutting into the average selling price without stimulating growth in volume.
Apple gained share in China after US sanctions cut Huawei off from the world’s leading chipmakers, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), in 2020.
The Shenzhen-based electronics firm’s return to competitiveness in the mobile market has seen it claw back market share, and it is now developing its own software ecosystem to compete with Apple’s iOS and Alphabet Inc’s Android.
Separately, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s largest assembler of iPhones which is known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), is losing a long-time executive in India, just as the manufacturer is pushing to expand in the South Asian country.
Josh Foulger, the country head of Foxconn’s Bharat FIH arm, is leaving the company after nine years, people familiar with the matter said.
Foulger, a three-decade veteran in the electronics industry, has helped the Taiwanese contract manufacturer and its customers including Xiaomi Corp (小米) expand in India.
Over time though, Bharat FIH began losing share of the Xiaomi business as the Chinese brand sought more local partners in India after the country’s government encouraged manufacturers to work more closely with Indian suppliers.
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