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Market analysis means that China’s smartphone market restoration started in January 2023, with iPhone gross sales up 6% year-over-year — though different sources are much less assured.
Counterpoint Analysis beforehand claimed that Apple had its best sales ever in China in October 2022, however since then it says the market struggled.
“2022 noticed October, November, and December (sometimes China’s greatest months collapse,” says the company’s report. “That is far much less more likely to occur in 2023.”
Counterpoint bases this on the information that China has lifted COVID restrictions, and that “the Chinese language New 12 months season additionally began sooner than ordinary this yr, serving to the weekly gross sales stroll out of the trough firstly of 2023.”
It additionally specifies that Apple’s January gross sales had been up 6% for the reason that similar time in 2022. Plus general smartphone gross sales “rapidly elevated week over week to achieve above 7 million earlier than the week the Chinese language New 12 months season began.”
“In 4 out of 5 weeks, the gross sales stayed above 6 million, a degree seldom reached in 2022 when the pandemic haunted China’s cities sometimes,” continues the report. “The common weekly gross sales in the course of the interval had been 6.7 million models, a lot increased than the common of 5.5 million models in 2022.”
Counterpoint does additionally say that the smartphone trade is “skeptical” that robust January 2023 gross sales “are a strong indicator of [a] restoration in demand.”
Reportedly, some trade figures imagine that the rise was the results of “pent-up demand from December,” plus the sooner than ordinary New 12 months season.
“[However, if] the present progress momentum can persist by way of the tip of Q1 2023, trade gamers ought to be extra assured a few market restoration,” says Counterpoint.
Counterpoint expects Android producers to launch new fashions in the course of the quarter, however reviews that distributors are cautious after having held excessive inventories in 2022.
Apple won’t launch a brand new iPhone in the course of the first quarter, though it could once more launch a variation of its newest fashions. It did this with the purple iPhone 12 in 2021, and the green iPhone 13 in 2022.
It is also not clear the place CounterPoint sources its information, or the accuracy of what it has collected. Apple hasn’t reported iPhone gross sales volumes in years.
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