The Chinese smartphone market is very competitive and with good reason. It’s the biggest smartphone market on the planet after all in terms of sales volume. The competition in tough with local players being dominant and Apple working hard to carve out a niche for itself. According to a new report, Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus was the second best-selling smartphone in China last year.
Even though smartphone OEMs made significant efforts in new product development, channel expansion, and marketing promotion last year, the country’s smartphone market ended 2017 with weak demand and no major surge in growth. Even though bezel-less smartphones created a lot of buzz in the second half of the year, that buzz didn’t really translate into a lot of sales.
Data from Counterpoint’s Market Pulse service reveals that the iPhone 7 Plus was the second best-selling handset in China last year and it accounted for 2.8 percent of the market. Apple is the only foreign brand on the top 10 list of best-selling handsets in China.
It’s second only to local rival Oppo’s R9S which accounted for 3 percent of the market. The iPhone 7 was also able to win a spot on this list, it came in fifth place with a market share of 2.4 percent. Apple’s major rival Samsung is nowhere to be found, but then again, Samsung’s troubles in China have already been well documented.
The report mentions that all of the models that made it on the list maintained an average monthly sales volume of at least one million units. The iPhone 7 series reportedly did much better in the second half of 2017 after Apple decided to implement a price cut strategy to boost sales.