While Galaxy AI has enjoyed colossal success in Europe in the first three months of the year with sales of the Galaxy S24, the outlook in China remains quite discouraging for Samsung, which has continued to have a very low presence for years. Apple faces a very different framework as it disappeared from the Asian country’s top five best-selling charts for the first time this year.
A final point to study what happened so that manufacturers like OPPO, HONOR, Huawei, Vivo and Xiaomi are the reference in their own country, and high-value brands like Samsung and Apple are excluded from the game.
According to the latest data from Canalys, the mobile market in China has seen a 10% growth over one year in the second quarter of 2024 with a total number of 70 million units distributed. And if there is a surprise with the release of the two brands mentioned, there is also a surprise with the number one in sales.
Canalys Charts
Free Android
Vivo has distributed 13.1 million units to take over 19% market share. A huge growth that represents 15% compared to last year and is mainly due to its excellent performance in offline channels and strong online sales during the “618” e-commerce event.
Behind goes OPPO in second placewith a total of 11.3 million units, boosted by the launch of the new Reno 12 series; HONOR in third place, with distributions that reached 10.7 million units, an increase of 4% year-on-year; Huawei, maintaining fourth place with a total of 10.6 million units; and Xiaomi in fifth place, with an incredible increase of 17% year-on-year for a total of 10 million units sold.
The difference between OPPO, HONOR, Huawei and Xiaomi is not great and between the second and third there are 100,000 units, so the fight to maintain these positions is very interesting. Samsung stays with the rest of the manufacturers
So what Samsung has had an unstoppable year in rolling out new mobile phonesfoldables, watches, tablets and new accessories like the Galaxy Ring. On the software side, it hit hard with Galaxy AI by opening it up to flagships from two years ago, but even with those, it failed to gain a share. And the five local manufacturers hold 79% of the total market share in China, and 55.7 million units shipped out of a total of 70.5 million.
What is interesting is that apart from Huawei with HarmonyOS, Android Dominates China’s Mobile Phone Market with a distribution made between the four manufacturers. HONOR also continues to reassert itself as one of the surprises.
