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Prefacio
Recently, market research institutions released the 2023 global and Chinese smartphone market reports.
Data shows that Apple won the first place in double rankings!
Let’s look at the global market first.
2023 will be the worst year for the global smartphone market in 10 years.
This year, global smartphone shipments reached 1.17 billion units, a year-on-year decrease of 3.2%.
The market is declining and competition is becoming more intense
The decline in shipments in the entire market means that competition among mobile phone manufacturers has become more intense.
The biggest change is that Apple surpassed Samsung for the first time and took the number one position in the world.
Specific to the data, Apple’s annual shipments were 234.6 million units, making it the only manufacturer among the top three to achieve positive growth.
Relatively speaking, the shipments of Samsung, Xiaomi, and OPPO have declined to varying degrees.
Among them, Samsung suffered the most severe decline, finally losing its No. 1 spot in the world after 13 years.
This is mainly because Samsung faces erosion from Chinese manufacturers in the mid- to low-end market and has to deal with competition from Apple in the high-end market.
The rapid growth of Chinese manufacturer Transsion also confirms this point.
Compared with 2022, Transsion shipped 94.9 million units, a year-on-year increase of 30.8%, ranking among the top five in the world for the first time.
Against the backdrop of declining global shipments, Transsion is grabbing the business of other Android phone manufacturers, including Samsung.
The mobile phone market is in hot and cold conditions around the world, and China’s smartphone market sales are also shrinking.
Statistics from CBI show that the activation volume of China’s smartphone market in 2023 will be 270 million units, which is lower than that in 2022.
In the Chinese market, Apple also won the first place.
Although the reputation of iPhone in the domestic market is not as good as before, sales are still very strong.
Especially in the fourth quarter, after Apple released new products, it promoted trade-in activities and enjoy-now-pay-later services, which greatly increased sales.
In the smartphone market in 2023, Apple is the undisputed biggest winner.
Here, we summarize three points:
First, Samsung and Apple cannot be underestimated.
Although Samsung lost its number one position, it should be noted that this was achieved on the premise of losing most of the Chinese market.
Not only did Apple take first place in both categories, this achievement was even more rare considering its high average price.
Looking at the global market, the top five leading manufacturers account for nearly 70% of the market share, and there is still a trend of further concentration.
Second, emerging markets have great potential.
The reason why Transsion has been able to achieve explosive growth of more than 30% is because the “King of Africa” is moving out of Africa and conquering emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, South America and the Middle East.
In the third quarter of last year, more than 70% of Transsion’s smartphone revenue came from regions outside Africa.
The domestic market is too large, and emerging markets have great potential.
Third, competition in the Chinese market has become more intense.
Although Apple has won the first place in the Chinese mobile phone market, if you look closely, you will find that the gap between the top five is not big.
Apple only has 0.4% more market share than second-placed vivo, and 1.1% more market share than third-placed OPPO.
The major manufacturers are fighting hand-to-hand, and the number one spot may change hands at any time.
It is worth noting that in the high-end smartphone market, Apple’s market share is declining, while the market share of domestic manufacturers is increasing.
In 2024, we look forward to Huawei’s return as the king.