On April 30th, IDC, Canalys, and Counterpoint, the three major market research institutions, successively released data on the first quarter smartphone sales and market share in China.
However, their rankings differ. According to IDC, the top 5 market shares are held by Honor, Huawei, OPPO, Apple, and Vivo.
Canalys lists Huawei, OPPO, Honor, Vivo, and Apple in their top 5, while Counterpoint's top 6 are Vivo, Honor, Apple, Huawei, OPPO, and Xiaomi.
These varying rankings have left many puzzled about which brand truly holds the largest market share in China.
One of the main reasons for the significant differences in data is the different statistical methods used by these research institutions.
IDC and Canalys track sell-in data, which represents shipments from manufacturers to distributors or retailers, while Counterpoint tracks sell-through data, which can be understood as activations.
Despite the disagreement on who is the "first," these institutions have agreed on a few points.
Firstly, Huawei has seen a significant growth in smartphone sales. According to IDC, Huawei's sales in the first quarter increased by 110%, while Canalys reported a 70% growth, and Counterpoint noted a 69.7% increase.
Another point of consensus is the decline of Apple in the Chinese market. Across IDC, Canalys, and Counterpoint's data, Apple's market share in China saw year-on-year declines of 6.6%, 25%, and 19.1% in the first quarter.
Statistics from IDC, Canalys, and Counterpoint from left to right.
