China’s Smartphone Market Hits The Largest Decline In The Last Five Years

• China's smartphone shipments are at the lowest point in the previous five years.
• Xiaomi is the only company that defies this trend.
• The Chinese market is expected to bounce back in the second quarter of the year.

When the whole smartphone industry of one country is experiencing a decline in a number of orders, it is hardly possible to go unnoticed. The same goes for China's smartphone industry. Chinese smartphone market has been in a decline year after year, and the latest analysis shows that this trend is only getting bigger.

If we check the latest Canalys report, we can notice that the smartphone shipments in this country were plummeting in the last quarter of 2017. The latest report for the first quarter of 2018 is even worse. A 21 percent decline is supposed to be the current state of the Chinese smartphone market. Smaller companies like Vivo and Oppo suffered the greatest drop of 10 percent in shipments. Behind them are Samsung, Gionee, and Meizu with the drop of 5 percent. We can notice that even Huawei, which is one of the leading smartphone brands in the region, is having only a slight increase in shipments of 2% in this quarter.

Image Courtesy Of Canalys

On the other hand, as noticed by the Engadget, Xiaomi is the only brand that is having a good time in the current market state. Xiaomi's shipments report for the first quarter of 2018 shows a stunning rise of 37 percent. Such a good result may not come as a surprise if we consider that Xiaomi has released both entry-level and high-end models. Of course, we are talking about Mi Mix 2S and Mi 6X smartphones.

If we follow up the Canalys report, and the upcoming release dates of flagships like Huawei's P20 smartphones, we can expect the Chinese market to bounce back. However, Chinese smartphone arena is fairly saturated with similar companies, creating very similar products and basically selling them with the same strategy as the next one in line. If the history has thought us something, it is that in this kind of scenarios, only the biggest companies survive.