Apple’s Chinese market share and shipment volume fell for the first time last year, according to market data from IDC.
For 2016, Apple experienced year-on-year decline in China with the tech giant’s shipments volume to China falling from 58.4 million units in 2015 to 44.9 million in 2016.
Meanwhile, its market share dropped 4 percentage points to 9.6 percent, even as the Chinese smartphone market grew 9 percent for the full year, according to the latest IDC Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.
At the same time, Chinese smartphone vendors saw their market share rise, with the share belonging to the top four Chinese vendors going from 46 percent in 2015 to 57 percent in 2016.
The leading vendors were OPPO, Huawei and vivo. OPPO has grown very quickly; in 2015 it sold 50 million smartphones, breaking into the top 10 smartphone brands worldwide. This year it sold 78.4 million units in the China market, topping Huawei’s 76.6 million.
