The rise of Android phones has with no doubt have some effects on Apple‘s iPhone sales globally. Just last week Wednesday, the US company reported that it is slashing its revenue forecast for the initially fiscal quarter (2018Q4) to $84 billion, down from the previous forecast of between $89 billion and $93 billion. The manufacturer also adjusted its gross sales margin to 38%, compared to the previous forecast of 38% to 38.5%. The announcement saw Apple’s stock price plummeting by 10% the following working day. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook n an open letter to investors marshalled out several factors that were responsible for the company’s revenue to fall short of expectations. Few of the reasons adduced have a lower-than-expected iPhone gross sales, poor performance in the Chinese market, and a stronger US dollar.
Despite the revelation of the poor performance in the Chinese market, a innovative report by research firm Canalys shows that Apple’s overall performance in the Chinese market in the previous quarter (2018Q3) was nice, at least in terms of revenue. The report put the gross revenue of the Chinese smartphone market was 30.7 billion US dollars, and just 5 brands enjoy the bigger share of this bounty, namely Apple, Huawei, OPPO, Vivo and Xiaomi. Among the large amount, Apple and Huawei grabbed the largest revenues, with Apple’s revenue accounting for 23% of the total revenue although Huawei had a 22% share. It must be reported that Apple’s incredibile experience is mainly because of to the release of iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max at the close of the quarter, and the popularity of older models this kind of as iPhone X and iPhone 8. Although Huawei is benefiting from the hot sale of P20 and P20 Pro and the powerful performance of its Honor branded mobile smartphones.
In terms of shipments, Huawei topped the market with an estimate of 101 million shipped units, representing 25% market share. This is closely followed by Vivo with a 23% market share, Oppo with 21% market share and Xiaomi with a 13% market share. Apple arrived in at the fifth spot but higher revenue than the rest. The report by Canalys Additionally displays that Samsung arrived in at the seventh spot in China despite maintaining its lead in the global market. Finally, Nokia moreover broke into the top 10 phone makers in China in terms of market share in Q3 2018. As it stands, Apple, Samsung and Nokia are the only 3 foreign mobile smartphone vendor with substantial influence in China. This yet again put a spotlight on the growth of Chinese domestic brands.