TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The smartphone market is increasingly heating up with intense competition between products and companies. Top producers like Apple, Xiaomi, Samsung, Oppo, Vivo, as well as other brands are racing to expand their market share in a bid to boost sales.

Gizmochina's report on January 31 said that the global smartphone market has been experiencing a decline for some time. But not for China, where smartphone shipments there rose 6.5 percent year-on-year to 289 million units last year.

The decline in the global smartphone market was caused by two factors: users' hesitation to spend money due to global inflation as an effect of the pandemic, and because newly released smartphones provide more performance beyond our needs.

The growth in China is mainly driven by the increasing demand for 5G technology, with 240 million out of the total being 5G models, making up 82.8 percent of phone sales in the country.

A quite striking phenomenon is that Apple products such as the iPhone are not very popular with users in China. The Gizmochina report noted how Android phones are more popular among users in China, where local brands such as Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo dominate the market with a sales volume of 231 million units while Samsung and Apple held a combined 58 million share.

Despite Apple's status as the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer, data suggests that China's contribution to this growth is relatively modest. It seems that users in the region still favor Android over iOS.

In 2023, various companies introduced 406 phones in China, a 5.5% increase from the previous year, and potentially the highest globally.

Alif Ilham Fajriadi

Editor's Choice: How to Get Singapore Citizenship for Indonesians

Click here to get the latest news updates from Tempo on Google News