Owning to overseas markets entering the traditional strong season and Chinese brand vendors launching new promotions for Singles' Day in November for the domestic market, their combined smartphone shipments worldwide are expected to rise sequentially in both quarters of the second half, according to DIGITIMES Research's new report covering the China smartphone industry.
With overseas markets gradually stepping out of the slow season and domestic demand robustly driven by promotion campaigns launched for the 618 shopping festival, China-based smartphone brands as a whole enjoyed a sequential growth of 2.7% in worldwide shipments in the second quarter of 2024 with the volumes going up 14.4% year-on-year thanks to a low comparison base in the same quarter a year ago.
China-based smartphone vendors shipped a total of 167.2 million units in the second quarter of 2024. Regarding market concentration, the top-3 brands – Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo – together experienced a sequential shipment growth weaker than that of Transsion, Honor, Lenovo, and Huawei combined. As a result, the combined shipment share of the top-3 brands decreased to 57.8%, down from first-quarter 2024's 58.9%.
Looking into the second half of 2024, Chinese smartphone brands are optimistic about Singles' Day promotions to boost their smartphone sales in the fourth quarter. Coupled with increasing overseas demand driven by seasonality, China-based smartphone vendors are expected to see sequential growth for both the third and fourth quarters of 2024 with quarterly shipments to exceed 170 million units during the period.
DIGITIMES Research estimates that China-based smartphone vendors' shipments in 2024 will grow to 680.1 million units, increasing 9.1% year-on-year. Compared with the previous estimate in April, this is an upward revision of 4.3 million units, mainly reflecting a better-than-expected recovery in the China market.
The global market share of China-based vendors' shipments is about 57.6%, a decrease of 0.3% from the previous estimate, mainly because the decline in Apple and Samsung's shipments for 2024 is expected to be less than originally anticipated.
