In brief: Considering Apple no longer shares sales figures for its iPhone, reports like these are perhaps the most accurate indicator we have of market performance. As you'll see, IDC's findings are on par with what another research firm reported last month.
Shipments of Apple and Xiaomi smartphones in China plummeted during the fourth quarter of 2018 according to a report published by International Data Corporation (IDC) on Monday (via Bloomberg).
In the final three months of 2018, shipments of Apple's iPhone dropped 19.9 percent year-over-year while Xiaomi saw its shipments slashed by more than a third compared to the same period a year earlier.
Nobody told Huawei about the smartphone slump. The Chinese tech giant saw its shipments in the homeland increase by 23.3 percent during the most recent quarter, pushing its local market share to an impressive 29 percent. Vivo experienced growth of 3.1 percent year-over-year while Oppo saw its numbers nudge north by 1.5 percent, IDC found.
Collectively, all others saw shipments drop by 44.4 percent in the quarter.
The findings are in line with a report last month from Canalys on the health of the Chinese smartphone market. If you recall, smartphone shipments in China slid to 396 million units in 2018 according to Canalys, down from 459 million in 2017.
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