However, the last quarter saw a 1.2% year-over-year increase in shipments, thanks to strong demand for premium smartphones, particularly in major cities. Apple’s strategic price cuts through third-party channels played a pivotal role in this growth, as did Honor’s reinforced channel partnerships and diversified product offerings, securing their respective top spots in the market.

A remarkable turnaround was Huawei’s re-entry into the top five, after more than two years, suggesting a revitalized competitive landscape. Despite these shifts, the final quarter of 2023 revealed nuanced dynamics: Apple and Honor slightly decreased their market shares, while Huawei saw a significant 36.2% increase, and the ‘Others’ category grew by 11.9%, indicating a diversifying market.

In contrast, Q4 2023 observed a 1.2% year-over-year uplift in shipments to 73.6 million units, halting a streak of declines over ten quarters. This rebound was spearheaded by robust demand for premium smartphones in major cities, while the market for lower-end phones lagged, despite their majority share in China’s market.

Arthur Guo, a senior research analyst at IDC China, highlighted Apple’s ascent to prominence amidst stiffened competition and subdued spending. Apple’s strategic price cuts through third-party channels spurred demand, securing its dominance.

Concurrently, Honor solidified its second position through enhanced channel partnerships and a diversified product suite, appealing to both high-end and mid-range segments.

A notable event in 4Q23 was Huawei’s resurgence in the top five after a hiatus exceeding two years, notes Will Wong, IDC Asia/Pacific’s senior research manager. This comeback intensifies competition in the world’s most significant smartphone arena.

The data reveals a mixed picture:

• Apple’s market share declined slightly from 20.6% in Q4 2022 to 20.0% in Q4 2023, indicating a -2.1% change.
• Honor also saw a slight dip from 17.1% to 16.8%, a -0.9% change.
• Vivo’s market presence shrank by -8.4%, dropping to 15.7% from 17.4%.
• Huawei defied the trend, soaring by +36.2% to reach a 13.9% market share, up from 10.3%.
• OPPO’s share fell by -16.1% to 13.7%, down from 16.5%.
• The ‘Others’ category grew by +11.9%, accumulating a 20.0% share, a significant collective rise.

The overall market dynamics for 2023 contrast with the final quarter, suggesting a nuanced recovery trajectory. While Apple and Honor lead the charge, with Huawei’s return signaling a potential market shakeup, companies like Vivo and OPPO may need to rethink strategies to maintain their footholds.

The Rise of Foldable Smartphones

In a notable development, IDC’s latest quarterly mobile phone tracker highlights the explosive growth of China’s foldable smartphone market, with shipments reaching approximately 2.77 million units in Q4 2023, a staggering 149.6% year-over-year increase.

This surge is propelled by new releases from Huawei, OPPO, and Honor, marking a continuous rapid growth trend for the fourth consecutive year, with a total of 7.01 million units shipped in 2023, up 114.5% from the previous year.

Improvements in hardware technology, software applications, and a drop in prices have enhanced the consumer experience and widened the foldable smartphone’s appeal. The price segment of $400-$600 is becoming increasingly populated, reflecting the segment’s potential for further growth.

Market Preferences and Performance

Consumers have shown a preference for horizontally folding devices over their vertically folding counterparts, despite the latter’s lower price points, due to the superior screen experience they offer.

Horizontally folding models, especially favored by the business sector for mobile office use, regained market share, reaching 68.1%, a 10.4 percentage point increase from the previous year.

In terms of market performance, Huawei dominated the foldable market with its Mate X5 series, capturing a 37.4% share.

OPPO followed with an 18.3% share, leading the vertically folding segment. Honor’s aggressive push in the second half of 2023 earned it third place, with a 17.7% share and the fastest growth rate of 467.0%. Samsung and Vivo rounded out the top five, facing stiff competition in the vibrant Chinese market.

Future Outlook

Arthur Guo of IDC China underscores the importance of balance between design and reliability in the foldable market.

As manufacturers vie for dominance in 2024, the foldable smartphone segment is set to continue its rapid expansion, driven by innovation and an increasing number of market players.

This evolving landscape suggests a dynamic future for China’s smartphone market, with foldable technology at the forefront of the next wave of mobile innovation.

The top 5 smartphone vendors in the Chinese market in the fourth quarter of 2022 are Apple (20.6%), Vivo (17.5%), Honor (17.1%), Oppo (15.6%), and Xiaomi (11.6%).

In 2022, the top five smartphone vendors in the year are Vivo (18.6%), Honor (18.1%), Oppo (16.8%), Apple (16.8%), and Xiaomi (13.7%).

China smartphone shipment in Q3 2022; total shipments down 12%

In the third quarter of 2022, the Chinese smartphone market shipped approximately 71.13 million units, down 11.9% year-on-year, according to data from IDC.

Although the decline narrowed for the first time this year, market demand continued to be sluggish following the first half of the year; thanks to the early release of Apple’s iPhone 14 series and the return of Huawei’s Mate 50 series, the domestic smartphone market achieved a quarter-on-quarter growth of 6.0% in the third quarter.

In the third quarter, Vivo returned to first place in China’s domestic smartphone market in terms of shipments, with a market share of 20.0%. The sub-brand iQOO has been continuously recognized by the market with its good product strength and competitive pricing, and its market share has continued to increase, reaching 4.6% of the domestic market in the third quarter.

The Vivo X series continued the excellent performance of the previous quarter and maintained its leadership in the mid-to-high-end market of US$400-600

Honor and Oppo’s shipments ranked 2nd and 3rd in Q3 2022 with 17.9% and 16.3% market share respectively..

Apple’s ranking rose one place, and its market share increased month-on-month to 15.1%, the only top smartphone vendor to maintain year-on-year growth. Although the two models of the iPhone 14 Pro are still very popular, the iPhone 14 and the iPhone 14 Plus, which were only officially shipped in October, have limited appeal to consumers due to their small upgrades compared to the previous generation, while the iPhone 13 series is still favored.

Xiaomi smartphones shipped about 9 million units in the third quarter, accounting for 12.7% of the market.

In Q3 2022, China’s single-quarter shipments of foldable smartphones exceeded 1 million, a year-on-year increase of about 246%, the largest single-quarter shipment in history.

Strong brand and product power helped Huawei to remain in the first position in the domestic foldable screen smartphone market, with a market share of 44.9%.

Samsung’s two new products, Z Fold4 and Z Flip4, have significantly better sales than the previous generation, ranking second, accounting for 22.2% of the market share in the foldable smartphone segment.

The newly released X Fold+ series also helped Vivo to rise to third place in this market, with a market share of 11.9%. Xiaomi’s new MIX FOLD 2 has also won a better market reputation than the previous generation due to its thin and light appearance, and its market share has increased to 9.3%, ranking fourth.

China IoT market to account for 45% of global spend by 2025

China smartphone market share in Q2 2022

In the second quarter of 2022, China’s smartphone shipment reached about 67.2 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 14.7%, according to data from IDC. In the first half of the year, the domestic smartphone shipment totaled about 140 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 14.4%.

Honor ranked first in domestic market shipments in the second quarter, and Vivo ranked second. In the first half of the year, the domestic shipments of foldable smartphones exceeded 1.1 million, with a year-on-year increase of about 70%.

China smartphone market share in Q1 2022; Apple has 16.7% share

In the first quarter of 2022, China’s smartphone market saw about 74.2 million units shipment, a year-on-year decrease of 14.1%, according to data from IDC.

The impact of the continuous rebound of the epidemic on consumers’ budgets and the small upgrading range of new products have led to the continuous downturn of market demand.

The more uncertain overseas market prospect has led many mobile phone manufacturers to adopt more stable and conservative operation strategies, and the market will face great challenges throughout the year.

Oppo ranked first in terms of domestic smartphone shipment market share in the first quarter, followed by Honor, with a very high year-on-year increase, Vivo in the third place, Apple in the fourth place, and Xiaomi in fifth place.

At the same time, the negative impact of the current domestic epidemic on the logistics and supply side of the mobile phone market is relatively controllable, which brings about the delay in meeting part of the demand.

If there is no additional positive stimulus, the capacity of China’s smartphone market may fall below the 300 million mark in 2022, according to IDC.

Vivo has the largest market share of 19.7% by total smartphone sales, according to Counterpoint, followed by Oppo (18%), apple (17.9%), Honor (16.9%), Xiaomi (14.9%), and Huawei (6.2%). In the first quarter, domestic mobile phone sales fell 14% year-on-year to 74.2 million.

The three leading smartphone brands – Huawei (excluding Honor), Xiaomi, and iPhone – kept winning more shares in urban China market as all grew their shares over a year ago, according to the Q3 data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. Xiaomi Mi 8 was the most popular handset model in Q3 2018. The next three models on the best-seller ranking were all from iPhone, including the runner-up iPhone X.

As more brands followed iPhone’s suit to launch premium products, the average selling price of smartphones in Q3 increased across the industry. The proportion of sales from premium models increased by 7 percentage points from a year ago.

Huawei continued to win consumers from other brands. Huawei ranked No.1 in terms of net new consumers won (=total new consumers won – total new consumers lost) in Q3, followed by iPhone.

Among all the users leaving Huawei and Honor, the proportion of people joining iPhone camp decreased from a year ago. While the proportions of OPPO/VIVO-turned-iPhone user increased.

There is a lot in common in ex-OPPO/VIVO users, such as they’re relatively young, most of them live in tier-1 and -2 cities, not happy with chips and speed, pay attention to other people’s recommendations, etc.

It’s more important, and to some extent easier, for smartphone brands to keep existing consumers compared to win over consumers. They need to invest more in raising loyalty, according to Liang Yaguang, Consumer Insight Director of Kantar Worldpanel ComTech China.

The average Net Promoter Score (NPS) among Chinese consumers dropped in Q3. Huawei (excluding Honor), VIVO, and OPPO are above the average among mainstream iPhone. The NPS for Samsung eclipsed that of Xiaomi for the first time.

As major brands keep expanding their user bases, the user profiles began to look more like each other. OPPO and VIVO both had more male users while Huawei (excluding Honor) and Xiaomi had obtained more female consumers.

In the United States, Android lost ground to iOS in Q3. Early sales of iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max models in the United States are good news for Apple.

Combined with the continued strong momentum among iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, these sales have contributed to a 5.0 percentage point increase in OS share for Apple in the US – the biggest gain seen worldwide in Q3 2018.

iPhone 8 was the top-selling model in the US over the quarter, with a 9.4% share of the handset market, according to Dominic Sunnebo, Global Director for Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

But in the five main European markets (UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy), Android made significant gains against iOS. The Samsung Galaxy S9 was the top-selling model across the big five markets in September. Meanwhile, the newly released Galaxy Note 9 has made it into the top 10 most popular models for the month. Both Huawei (P20 Lite) and Xiaomi (Mi Note 5) made it to the top five handset ranking for the first time.

European consumers are holding on to their handsets more than two months longer than they were in 2016. Huawei has consolidated its position as the second best-selling brand in Europe behind Samsung from the launch of its P20 series.

Xiaomi continued to expand rapidly in Spain and, more recently, in Italy and France. The focused push that Huawei and Xiaomi are making into Europe is causing pain for their rivals across the board. However, it is Sony, LG, and Wiko who are being disproportionally impacted as a result of their historic over-reliance on the ultra-competitive low and mid-price tiers.

In Japan, Apple continued to lead handset sales under the pressure from Sharp and Huawei, both of which has increased shares of sales by 6 percentage points and 3.2 percentage points, respectively. Sharp’s flagship Aquos R2 and Huawei’s P20 Lite were among the top five best-sellers for the third quarter.

This post was originally published on Kantar.com.

China smartphone market declined 15.7% year-over-year (YoY) in Q4 2017 and 4.9% for the whole of 2017 according to IDC.

Apple’s share increased YoY and QoQ in Q4 2017. Although the iPhone X was available in short supply initially at launch in early November 2017, the supply constraints for this model eased towards the end of the quarter. Apple’s ASP increased by 23.9% YoY in 2017Q4 largely due to the shipments of the iPhone X. Apple alone made up 85% of the overall shipments in >US$600 premium segment.

Huawei appears on the radar to compete with Apple in the >US$600 premium segment. Huawei grew in Q4 2017 largely due to the strong shipment for both its Honor and Huawei branded phones in the US$600 premium segment still remains low, it has grown from making up 2% of the shipments in this segment in 2016Q4 to 8% in Q4 2017. With its Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro series being quite popular, Huawei will be a potential competitor to Apple in the >US$600 premium segment in China.

With Samsung’s continued troubles in the China market, Huawei has successfully managed to break into the high-end Android vendor space, although price points of the flagship Huawei phones are carefully priced lower than the iPhone prices at launch.

OPPO and vivo are focusing more on the mid-range segment, with a higher share of their portfolio focused on the mid-range segment compared to a year ago. The reduction in the number of OPPO and vivo models in the low-end segment also contributed to their YoY decline in Q4 2017.

While focusing more on the mid-range segment has hurt its overall shipment growth, OPPO and Vivo’s overall ASPs have increased YoY. In terms of revenue, OPPO ranked second to Apple and was above Huawei. vivo follows at fourth place. Thus, while OPPO’s shipments may have declined, it is growing in terms of its overall revenue.

China smartphone users: iPhone vs Android

Leading smartphone brands have tightened their grip of urban China market. In the three months ending October 2017, the top five brands – Huawei (including sub-brand Honor), Xiaomi, Apple, Vivo and OPPO – made up 91% of smartphone sales in urban China, compared to 79% a year earlier, according to the latest smartphone OS data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

China, a market once overrun with new challengers, is maturing.

“Chinese challenger brands like Meizu, LeTV, Coolpad, ZTE, and Lenovo were once on the same trajectory as like of Xiaomi, but any momentum they once had has abruptly stopped, with many struggling to get past a 1% share,” said Dominic Sunnebo, Global Business Unit Director for Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. “Samsung’s performance in China continues to deteriorate, with its share now down to just 2.2% of that market.”

Kantar Worldpanel ComTech carries out monthly panel surveys among Chinese urban mobile phone users to monitor the market share changes of various brands. In China, the panel size is 22,000. Panellists were recruited from tier-1 to 5 cities and each year more than 260,000 surveys were conducted. The nature of the research methodology means it can cover the influence of smartphones sold in other countries ended up in China and avoid the confusion caused by unsold phones stocked at warehouses of distributors.

Digging deeper into the data, we can see that Xiaomi and Honor both realized significant growth in August – October period. Xiaomi’s sales market share jumped to 20.1%, 1 percentage point higher than in the May – July circle. However, due to its previously lacklustre performance, currently only 13.8% of all urban smartphone users are using Xiaomi, 2.1 percentage points lower than a year ago.

Honor’s share was 11.7% in August – October, also 1 percentage point higher than in May – July circle. Among all urban smartphone users, 9.8% are using Honor, 1.3 percentage points higher than a year ago.

Among the top 20 best-selling models during August – October period, eight are from Xiaomi or Honor.

Even though “price” is the biggest advantage of both brands when people making their purchasing decision, Xiaomi and Honor have both managed to achieve higher selling prices. Between August and October, the average selling price of Xiaomi models is 1,640.32 yuan, 321.96 yuan higher than a year ago; that of Honor phones is 2,136.66 yuan, 506.53 yuan higher than a year ago.

It’s a bittersweet period for Apple. Urban China remained a bright spot for Apple, with its share edging up 0.5 percentage point in the latest three months to reach 17.4%.

But globally, iOS share fell in key markets, making clear the impact of the flagship iPhone X not being available to buy in the month of October.

Dominic said: “It was somewhat inevitable that Apple would see volume share fall once we had a full comparative month of sales taking into account the non-flagship iPhone 8 vs. the flagship iPhone 7 from 2016. This decrease is significant and puts pressure on the iPhone X to perform.

“Considering the complete overhaul that the iPhone X offers, consumers may be postponing their purchase decisions until they can test the iPhone X and decide whether the higher price, compared to the iPhone 8, is worth the premium to them,” he said.

He added: “As of October 2017, 35.3% of Apple’s installed base customers across Europe and the United States had owned their iPhones for more than two years – up from 30.1% a year earlier and signifying considerable pent-up demand within Apple’s base. In pure value terms, it is likely the iPhone X average selling price will more than make up for a dip in sales of older iPhone models.”

China smartphone market in Q3 2017; 4 out of 10 using Huawei or iPhone

In the ninth year of the world’s largest 24-hour shopping event, this year’s Tmall Double 11 2017 will showcase:

Alibaba Economy at scale. 11.11 will demonstrate the technological innovation and global scale of the entire Alibaba Economy. More than 140,000 brands and hundreds of millions of consumers will participate in 11.11 this year. This shopping festival will be supported by Alibaba’s global cloud, payment and logistics infrastructure.

Consumers will enjoy seamless payment and consumer loan services provided by Ant Financial. Alibaba Cloud will serve as the core technology and computing backbone to ensure the best consumer experience throughout the festival. Cainiao Network expects over 3 million logistics personnel to facilitate the hundreds of millions of packages that will be generated from the festival.

The number of annual active consumers on Alibaba’s China retail marketplaces reached 488 million, an increase of 22 million from the 12-month period ended June 30, 2017. See the performance highlights of Alibaba in Q3 2017 here.

Power of the Chinese consumer. Alibaba expects that hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers who visit its platforms on November 11 will have access to over 60,000 international brands and merchants to satisfy their increasing demand for goods and products from around the world. This year, Tmall will, for the first time, leverage its popularity outside China to bring over 100 domestic Chinese brands to international markets, targeting millions of overseas Chinese consumers in Asia and the rest of the world.

New Retail implementation. Alibaba’s New Retail model with integrated online-offline customer offerings will be showcased in store locations across China. More than 1,000 brands will convert nearly 100,000 physical locations into “smart stores” and our channel distribution solutions make it easy for more than 500,000 local neighborhood stores and Rural Taobao service centers to sell to consumers in lower-tier cities and rural villages.

Tmall Double 11 Sales Stats 2017

Total sales on Tmall Double 11 Shopping Festival reached 168.2 billion yuan in 2017 from 225 countries and regions, 90% from mobile.

167 merchants each has total transactions of over 100 million yuan. Nike store became the first one with over 1 billion yuan in apparel category.

Top 50 Tmall Stores on Double 11 2017

1. Suning
2. Xiaomi
3. Honor (Huawei)
4. Haier
5. Nike
6. Uniqlo
7. Sharp
8. Adidas
9. Linshimuye (furniture)
10. Midea
11. Quanyou (furniture)
12. GREE
13. Huawei
14. Gujia (furniture)
15. Heilan Home
16. PurCotton
17. Sanzhi Songshu (snacks)
18. P&G
19. Dyson
20. GXG
21. Balabala (children apparel)
22. New Balance
23. Semir
24. Peacebird
25. Jack Jones
26. Pechoin
27. Veromoda
28. ecovacs
29. Lancome
30. Zara
31. ONLY
32. Estee Lauder
33. Hisense
34. Anta
35. Philips
36. Gap
37. Chando
38. Eifini
39. Fotile
40. HSTYLE
41. Vivo
42. SK-II
43. Olay
44. Skyworth
45. Little Swan
46. Meters/bonwe (Apparel)
47. Xilinmen
48. Li Ning
49. Siemens
50. Bosideng (Apparel)

Outdoor sports

1. Nike
2. Adidas
3. Anta
4. New Balance
5. Li Ning
6. Sketchers
7. Puma
8. Xstep
9. Under Armour
10. Camel

Tmall Sales Progress on Double 11 2017

• 1 billion yuan: 28 seconds (vs. 52s in 2016)
• 10 billion yuan: 3 mins 1 seconds (vs. 6m 58s in 2016)
• 19.1 bn yuan: 5 mins 57s (exceeds total Double 11 sales in 2012)
• 36.2 bn yuan: 16 mins 10s (exceeds total Double 11 sales in 2013)
• 50 bn yuan: 40 mins 12s (vs. 2 hrs 30m 20s in 2016)
• 57.1 bn yuan: 1 hours 49s (exceeds total Double 11 sales in 2014)
• 91.2 bn yuan: 7 hours 22m 54s (exceeds total Double 11 sales in 2015)
• 100 bn yuan: 9 hours 4s(vs. 18 hrs 55m 36s in 2016)
• 120.7 bn yuan: 13 hours 9m 49s (exceeds total Double 11 sales in 2016)
• 168.2 bn yuan at 24:00

Alibaba Cloud processed 325,000 orders per second at peak. Alipay processed 1.5 billion payment transactions in total, up 41% from 2016, and processed 256,000 transactions per second at peak.

Other E-Commerce Platforms Double 11 Stats 2017

Total orders from 1 Nov till 7:46:58 on 11 Nov exceeded 100 billion yuan on Jingdong (JD). Total transactions on JD during the eleven days’ online sales reached 127.1 billion yuan with over 50% growth.

Netease Kaola total Double 11 sales value reached 4 times as much as last year’s. It reached the total transactions of last year’s Double 11 in the first 28 minutes. Kaola has 25.6% market share in China’s cross-border e-commerce market in Q3 2017 ranking first according to iiMedia.

Total orders on AliExpress exceeded 10 million as of 19:50 on Double 11 2017. It covers 184 countries and regions in the first two hours.

Find out more Singles Day 2017 Insights »

The total sales of smartphones in China reached 35.52 million units in April 2017, led by Huawei with 8.08 million units and 22.8% market share.

The top 10 smartphone brands also include OPPO, Vivo, Apple, Xiaomi, Meizu, Gionee, Samsung, Letv, and Lephone. The top three accounted for over 50% market share in April.

Apple’s market share increased by 0.7% compared with March 2017 to 11.6% in April 2017, ranking the fourth. And, Samsung fell out of the top five in China.

In the “3500-5000 yuan” high-end smartphone market, Huawei’s sales accounted for almost 90% in April 2017 according to a Chinese mobile phone retailer Dixintong.

China smartphone market insights for Q1 2017

iPhone has the highest retention rate (18.6%) in Q1 2017, followed by Huawei (13.4%). However, Huawei is the top smartphone brand in China by sales (19.2%) in the first quarter of 2017, followed by OPPO (18.7%).

China Smartphone Retention in Q1 2017

Smartphone Sales in China in Q1 2017

Top Android Smartphones

Top iPhone Models in Q1 2017

Related: E-Book: China Mobile Trends 2017

iOS market share dropped to 26.3% in China’s smartphone market from 29.1% in January 2017 according to a research company Newzoo.

iPhone remains the top smartphone brand in China in February 2017 by the number of monthly active devices (26.3%), followed by Huawei (15.6%), Xiaomi (13.8%), OPPO (13.8%), and Vivo (12.1%). Xiaomi AppStore bypassed Baidu Mobile Assistant to be the third Android App Store in China in Feb 2017.

OPPO and Vivo are the top two smartphone brands in Feb 2017 by sales, primarily driven by offline sales. Xiaomi dropped to the sixth with only 3.3% market share in offline sales and 23% in onlinene sales according a Chinese research company Sino.

• OPPO sold 7 million units offline (13.5 billion yuan), 206 thousand units online (460 million yuan)
• Vivo sold 6.17 million units offline (11.1 billion yuan), 187 thousand units online (464 million yuan)
• Xiaomi sold 1.1 million units offline (1.24 billion yuan), 1,896 thousand units online (2,277 million yuan)

Huawei’s HONOR (1.904 million units; 2.6 bn yuan) and Xiaomi (1.896 mn units; 2.28 bn yuan) are the top two best selling smartphone brands in terms of total online sales.

The top 10 Android app stores by total user coverage in China in December 2016 according to TalkingData are:

1. 360 Mobile Assistant
2. Tencent’s App Store
3. Baidu Mobile Assistant
4. Xiaomi App Store
5. OPPO App Store
6. Xiaomi Games Center
7. Huawei App Store
8. Google Play
9. Vivo Games Store
10. Vivo App Store

In comparison, another research company iiMedia data showed that the top 3 app stores by total number of active users in Q4 2016 were 360 Mobile Assistant (42.4%), Tencent App Store (34.8%), Baidu Mobile Assistant (25.1%), Wandoujia+PP Assistant (21.2%).

China has surpassed the United States as the largest market in the world for iOS App Store revenue earning over $1.7 billion in Q3 2016.

Download E-Book for details: Mobile Trend in China 2017 (CIW Premium members only)

China smartphone shipments were up 9% in Q4 2016 and 12% in 2016 according to Counterpoint. Huawei, Oppo, and Vivo (HOV) emerged as clear winners in 2016.

Oppo, Huawei, vivo, Meizu, and Gionee captured a combined 58% of the total Chinese smartphone market in 2016. Demand for rest of the brands declined, especially Xiaomi and Apple.

Oppo and Vivo were the fastest growing brand and since June 2016 owing to strong omnipresent distribution channels from tier-1 to tier-4 cities across China. Xiaomi slipped to the fourth spot during the year as the demand for its smartphones declined 22% annually.

Best-Selling Smartphone Models Share in 2016

Oppo R9 rose to the best-selling smartphone in China in 2016 breaking Apple’s iPhone dominance streak as the best-seller for the first time since 2012.

Android accounted for 80.7% of urban China smartphone sales in Q4 2016, an increase of 9.3 percentage points year-over-year according to Kantar. iOS made up 19.1% of smartphone sales, down from 27.1% in the same period a year earlier. iPhone 7 remained the top-selling model in the Chinese market in the last quarter of 2016 at 6.8%.

Related: China Smartphone Usage Insights 2016

Lenovo was ranked the most powerful Chinese export brand by WPP and Kantar Millward Brown, followed by Huawei, Alibaba, Elex and Xiaomi.

Update: Check out the latest ranking of top China brands here.

The “BrandZ™ Top 30 Chinese Global Brand Builders” 2017 ranking lists the Chinese brands that have most successfully established a presence in overseas markets.

1. Lenovo
2. Huawei (among world’s top growing brand in 2016)
3. Alibaba (also ranked the world’s 2nd most valuable retail brand)
4. Elex
5. Xiaomi (Apple and Xiaomi are found most relevant to the lives of China’s Gen-Y and Gen-Z consumers )
6. Air China
7. Haier
8. Anker
9. Cheetah Mobile
10. Hisense
11. GO Launcher
12. OnePlus
13. dji
14. China Eastern
15. ZTE
16. FunPlus
17. Qihoo 360
18. TCL
19. Tap4Fun
20. I Got Games
21. Youzu
22. Ourpalm
23. GearBest
24. China Southern Airlines
25. LightInTheBox
26. Oppo
27. Vivo
28. Ninebot
29. Tencent
30. Great Wall

The awareness gap between Chinese brands and other brands is narrower in France, Germany, Australia, and Spain.

Related: China is a relatively “brand content friendly” market

Also read: Top Chinese Brands

iOS declined in Urban China, falling to 13.5% of smartphone sales according to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. Android dropped 1.7 percentage points in the US.

iOS accounted for 13.5% of smartphone sales In Urban China in the three months ending August 2016, the lowest share for iOS since before the launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in July 2014 according to Tamsin Timpson, Strategic Insight Director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech Asia.

Android accounted for nearly nine out of every ten smartphones sold, with Huawei and Xiaomi remaining the top two brands in the region. Oppo, close on Apple’s heels, accounted for 10.6% of sales, with the Oppo R9 becoming the second best-selling phone in the region at 4%, behind the iPhone 6s at 4.3%.

The top three smartphone brands in September 2016 are Huawei (22%), Vivo (15%), and Oppo (13%) according to Dixintong. Find out more here.

Also read: Top 10 mobile apps by MAUs in Sep 2016