Could Huawei once again beat Apple to conquer China’s premium phone market share?

Huawei Mate 60 series is making new records in China’s smartphone market and the company has already surpassed the iPhone 15 weekly sales figures in the country at the moment. However, the analysts are now sharing their observations about a bigger picture of this entire scenario “Could Huawei beat Apple in China’s premium smartphone market?” Let’s find out the answer.

IDC Worldwide Tracker Team Research Director Nabila Popal shared her opinion on the current competition between Huawei and Apple as well as the future of their progress.

Starting with Apple, Nabila said Apple was at 16% of the market share in 2019 in China. In 2023, its market share is increased to 16%. This shows, how Huawei’s downfall after 2019 helped the American firm to grab more shares.

While talking about the high-end segment, the IDC tracker said that Huawei at its peak had over 58% of the overall premium smartphone market. On the other hand, Apple was limited to 35%.

By the second quarter of 2023, Apple reached 72% of the premium smartphone market share in China, while Huawei shrank to about 16%. She also touched on the possibility of Huawei surpassing Apple once again in this device segment.

“I don’t think so. Apple as a brand has what we like to call, like, yes, everyone understands the concept of brand loyalty, right? Yes, brand loyalty, but also brand stickiness. It’s very hard– stickiness being like once you are there, it’s very hard to pull out. You’re kind of stuck to that brand, and the OS system in general.” said Nabila.

She mentioned these key challenges for Huawei in order to get back the lost shares to Apple. Still, it depends on Huawei and its performance to sell new premium smartphones in the market.

Editor’s Take:

Nabila was right about the current position of Apple in the Chinese and global markets. However, the changing consumer interests and Huawei’s growth in the device ecosystem could make it an even competition in the premium smartphone segment if Huawei continues to innovate and launch new devices for Chinese consumers.

(source)