China Smartphone Shipment Fell By 35% In July 2020, As COVID-19 Impact Bites

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a lasting impression on almost all the industries around the world. Nothing is left untouched, everything has felt the pandemic's bite.

Reuters

A recent proof of this comes in the form of a smartphone shipment report from China, a country where the market was anticipated to have recovered post the pandemic. The sales, however, have apparently remained dismal despite the bounce back.

Smartphone shipments in China dropped by as much as 35 percent in July in comparison with a year earlier, a new report by Reuters cites the data released by Chinese government on Tuesday.

The dismal numbers are a clear indication of a still struggling smartphone market in the country. Demand for smartphones is still not at par with what it used to be before the pandemic, showing a massive setback that the industry has faced since the outbreak of the virus.

China smartphone numbers

(Representative Image: Reuters)

As for the specific numbers, smartphone makers were able to ship 21.3 million handsets from China in July. This number has dropped down from a total of 33 million smartphones shipped a year earlier, as per the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT).

Surprisingly, the drop in smartphone shipments in China this past July is even more than the decline observed in May and June, with the shipments going down by 10 percent and 16 percent in the months respectively year-on-year.

An interesting peak was observed in April, when CAICT reported an unexpected growth in smartphone shipment by 17 percent annually. The months prior to April suffered from a decline in demand as the outbreak was first being observed in China.

(Representative Image: Reuters)

April, hence, marked a ray of hope for the smartphone industry in the country, as the market showed signs of bouncing back from the drop earlier. However, the story since then has been one of dismay as the shipments have only gone further down as compared to the shipments in these months a year before.

Since retail outlets have re-opened almost completely in China, it was expected that the country¡¯s smartphone industry would have a revival from the pandemic by now. Since that is not the case, OEMs are now trying to figure out ways to bring their sales at par with the numbers of 2019.