By Che Pan and Eduardo Baptista <\/p>\n
BEIJING, July 7 (Reuters) – Smartphone sales in China fell 13% year-on-year during the month-long 618 shopping festival, as brands raised prices to offset higher memory costs, \u200caccording to data from Counterpoint Research. <\/p>\n
Sales declined from May 26 to June 21, with all \u200cmajor Chinese brands except Huawei posting double-digit drops as fewer promotions compared to last year weighed on demand. Honor sales dropped \u200b33%, while Xiaomi’s fell 24%. <\/p>\n
Higher memory prices amid a rapid build-out of AI infrastructure have pushed up handset costs this year, leaving brands with less room to offer steep discounts during the 618 festival, seen as a barometer for the country’s booming e-commerce sector. <\/p>\n
“Some older and newer models from Chinese smartphone brands were priced higher than \u200ccomparable models a year earlier, while \u2060discounts during this year’s 618 festival were generally less aggressive, both in terms of the size of price cuts and the range of products covered,” said Ivan \u2060Lam, senior analyst at Counterpoint Research. <\/p>\n
“Apple’s prices were broadly unchanged, but its discounts were also smaller.” <\/p>\n
Huawei Technologies led the market with a 21% share, and was the only major brand to record year-on-year growth during the 618 period, \u200bwith sales \u200brising 19%. <\/p>\n
Its Enjoy 90 Pro Max was its best-selling \u200bmodel. The Mate 80 also performed well, \u200csupported by promotions. <\/p>\n
Apple’s sales fell 9% from a year earlier, although the U.S. tech giant climbed to the No. 2 spot after rolling out incentives about a month ahead of June 18. <\/p>\n
The discounts offered savings of up to 2,000 yuan ($295) on the iPhone 17 Pro series through a mix of official price cuts, platform subsidies and trade-in deals. <\/p>\n
Still, Apple’s sales remained lower than a year earlier, partly because promotions for the \u200ciPhone 16 series were more aggressive during the same period \u200blast year. <\/p>\n
The 618 festival, which began as a one-day event \u200bmarking JD.com’s founding on June 18, 1998, \u200bhas since grown into a month-long sales campaign, with major e-commerce platforms competing for \u200cconsumer spending. <\/p>\n
In recent years, however, China’s biggest shopping \u200bfestivals have struggled to \u200bgenerate their former buzz, as extended discount periods and weak consumer sentiment have curbed appetite for non-essential spending, even at reduced prices. <\/p>\n
Counterpoint said the 618 festival helped smartphone sales recover in June \u200bfrom the previous month. But it \u200cadded that the market was likely to enter a seasonal slowdown afterward and post a \u200bdouble-digit decline in shipments for the year. <\/p>\n
($1 = 6.7886 Chinese yuan) <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Che Pan and Eduardo \u200bBaptista; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree and Kevin Buckland) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Che Pan and Eduardo Baptista BEIJING, July 7 (Reuters) – Smartphone sales in China fell 13% year-on-year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,46169,85,46,241596,241595,91314],"class_list":["post-528999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-counterpoint-research","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-memory-costs","tag-shopping-festival","tag-smartphone-sales"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}