Sales of Apple’s iPhones dove 18.2% in China during the December quarter, according to independent research firm Counterpoint Research.
The company’s flagship handsets, China’s top sellers a year earlier, relinquished the top spot to Huawei Technologies. Apple slipped to third in the world’s largest smartphone market over the three months with a market share of roughly 15%. The drop in China drove a global slump of 5% in iPhone sales during the key shopping period, Counterpoint reported.
The addition of artificial intelligence features to the newest iPhone models was supposed to lead to a surge in sales in the December quarter. But most of those new features are still not available in China because Apple is still seeking a local partner to provide on-device and cloud AI infrastructure.
“This is the first time since the U.S. ban that Huawei regained the leading position,” Counterpoint analyst Mengmeng Zhang told Bloomberg. “Huawei’s sales increased 15.5% year over year driven by the launch of the mid-end Nova 13 series and high-end Mate 70 series.”
The Mate 70 handsets released during the period are the first to use software completely free of U.S. technology, via Huawei’s HarmonyOS Next operating system. The phones also use made-in-China chips.
As of noon on Tuesday January 21, Apple shares were off 4.05%
