December mobile phone shipments in China were below our expectations with 26.6m units shipped, ↓10.1% m/m and ↓12.6% y/y. During December 45 new smartphone models were released, 38 of which were from local brands. We had based our expectations for higher unit volume shipments on this number of new models, however shipments fell short of our estimate by 16% with 5G shipments falling 9.5% m/m despite 19 new 5G models being released during the month. Local brands still contributed 77.4% of total shipments, which is similar to October and November, but 4Q local brand percentage was lower than all three previous quarters, with we expect, Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone 12 eating away at local brand penetration and reduced Huawei (pvt) sales.
According to our data 169.2m 5G smartphones were sold in China in 2020, against less than 20m shipped in 2019. This represents a 60% share of smartphone shipments, which has been consistent since June ’20 when it moved from the mid to upper 20% range to where it now stands. Overall smartphone shipments, which represent 96% of all devices shipped, were 307.98m units, ↓20.8% y/y.
According to our data 169.2m 5G smartphones were sold in China in 2020, against less than 20m shipped in 2019. This represents a 60% share of smartphone shipments, which has been consistent since June ’20 when it moved from the mid to upper 20% range to where it now stands. Overall smartphone shipments, which represent 96% of all devices shipped, were 307.98m units, ↓20.8% y/y.
Figure 5 - China Smartphone Shipments - 2019 - 2020 - Source: SCMR LLC, CAIST
Figure 6 - China 5G Smartphone Shipments & Share - Source: SCMR LLC, CAIST
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