China’s smartphone market likely posted its first increase in three years in 2024, with shipments in the first 11 months rising 4.9 per cent to 262 million units, data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) showed.
Shipments of 5G handsets grew 12 per cent year-on-year to 241 million units, accounting for 92 per cent of the total.
The increase came despite non-domestic vendors shipping 22 per cent fewer units at 42 million, CAICT data showed.
It does not disclose overseas brands, but Apple accounts for the vast majority of non-domestic shipments.
Total smartphone shipments in November, however, fell 5.6 per cent to 28.2 million units.
Data from IDC showed the country’s smartphone market dropped 5 per cent in 2023 to 271.3 million units and 13.2 per cent in 2022 to 285.5 million.
Shipments in those years fell below the 300 million mark for the first time since 2012.
In October 2024, IDC forecasted a “positive growth trajectory to continue into the fourth quarter”, but stated that shipments were unlikely to top 300 million for the full year.
MEANWHILE, China ended 2024 with 4.19 million 5G base stations “built and put into operation”, enabling “5G in every village”, and that number is expected to increase by more than 300,000 to 4.5 million by the end of this year, according to an update shared by the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) during its National Industrial and Information Technology Work Conference held in Beijing at the end of last year.
To put that into perspective, China’s telcos are expected to build more 5G base stations this year than the U.S. mobile operators have until now deployed between them. The U.S. telcos had about 270,000 5G base stations up and running in total by the start of 2024, according to this report from KPMG.
As a result of years of heavy investment in 5G infrastructure and the widespread promotion of services – the country’s three main operators were selling 5G contracts even before customers could access the services – China already boasts more than 1.18 billion 5G connections, roughly half of the estimated global total of some 2.3 billion.
China Mobile, which had just over 1 billion mobile connections at the end of November last year, ended that month with 547.1 million 5G customers.
China Telecom ended November with 349.4 million 5G customers, accounting for 423.7 million mobile connections, while China Unicom boasted 288.9 million 5G connections.
