Company records 17% drop in shipments, falling behind Vivo and Huawei due to lack of AI capabilities
The company faced a decline in smartphone sales in China, falling to 3rd place in 2024 after a 17% annual reduction in its shipments. Data from Canalys, released by Reuters this Thursday (January 16, 2025), show that Vivo and Huawei surpassed the iPhone maker, which saw its biggest annual sales drop in the country.
Vivo achieved a market share of 17%, followed by Huawei with 16% and Apple with 15%. The lack of artificial intelligence features in the latest iPhones, due to the unavailability of ChatGPT in China, was one of the factors that affected Apple’s competitiveness.
Toby Zhu, analyst at Canalys, stated: “This marks Apple’s worst annual performance in China”. He pointed to challenges facing Apple, including flagship launches by Huawei, the popularity of domestic foldable phones and consumer loyalty to Android brands such as Xiaomi and Vivo due to technological innovations.
After 4 years of growth, benefiting from US sanctions against Huawei, Apple is now seeing a resumption of Huawei in the premium segment. Since August 2023, Huawei has launched new phones with local chipsets, resulting in a 24% increase in shipments in the last quarter.
In response, Apple offered rare discounts in China from January 4 to 7, with reductions of up to 500 yuan ($68.50) on iPhone 16 models. E-commerce platforms such as Alibaba’s Tmall have also announced discounts up to 1,000 yuan ($137) on the latest iPhone 16 series devices.
