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Chinese mobile shipments dropped 16 percent in June: government data
(Reuters) According to government data published on Tuesday, mobile shipments in China dropped 16 per cent in June relative to the previous year.
The figures show that China's smartphone demand remains lukewarm given the country's rebound from the coronavirus pandemic, boding badly for Apple Inc AAPL.N and its local competitors such as Huawei Technologies Co Ltd.
According to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), a state-backed think-tank, phone makers delivered 27.7 million handsets in June, down from 32.7 million in June 2019.
This followed a similar fall in May, as sales fell from 36.4 million in May 2019 to 32.6 million a year later, by more than 10 percent year.
In April, CAICT announced that mobile shipments rose an unprecedented 17 percent per annum after a slump in the previous months due to the health crisis.
At the time, the leap indicated prospects for a resurgence in China's smartphone brands which have been grappling at home for years with diminishing production.
China is one of the few countries where, after a lockout period, retail stores re-opened almost entirely as COVID-19 expanded.
Apple and its competitor smartphone companies are not making national shipments publicly available.
Source: Reuters; Reporting by Josh Horwitz; Editing by Kim Coghill
