Mobile shipments are falling in China, but domestic brands have all but pushed out foreign competitors, according to a report released by the China Academy of Communications and Information Technology (CAICT, 中国信通院).
The analysis report shows that shipments of phones by non-Chinese manufacturers have fallen to 9.5% for the first half of 2017, down to 8.9% for the month of June. Domestic brand shipments were 216 million for the first half of the year, down 4.3% on 2016. 533 new models went on to the market, down 26.7% on last year and making up 94.3% of all new phone models, showing slightly more variants of domestic rather than foreign handsets. This follows days after another report that showed 6 out of the top 10 mobile phone brands worldwide are now Chinese.
The report also gives further insight into phone trends in general in China. The overall market saw shipments of 239 handsets of all phone categories for the first half of 2017, down 5.9%. There were a total of 565 new models across all types (2G, 3G, 4G, dumb phones, smartphones), 26% fewer than last year.
Smartphones made up the vast majority of shipments at 226 million or 94.6% of all shipments, but down 3.9% on the previous year. 187 million of the handsets run Android and there were 450 new models, down 31.2%, but making up 79.6% of all new models, 332 of which support Android.