Apple iPhone sales in China plunged 20% in 4Q

IDC said that Chinese tech company Huawei saw smartphone shipments rise 23.3 percent in the fourth quarter, allowing the firm to cut into Apple's market share. Still, Apple underperformed the market. "The report also claims that Apple will introduce a 'new Green-ish" color option for the most affordable iPhone of 2019, which will be the successor of the iPhone XR, and will also kill off one of the existing colour options - Black, White, Yellow, Coral, Red and Blue. But that didn't last long. The top-of-the-range iPhone XS Max costs $11,449, so the new iPhones are really expensive even for developed countries. Xiaomi Corp. fared even worse in the final months of a year ago, when unit shipments plunged nearly 35 percent, the consultancy estimates.

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). Although China's smartphone shipments fell by 9.7%, iPhone shipments fell by almost 20%.

The US-based company's revenue from the iPhone slid 15 percent in the October to December period.

Adding to Apple's troubles, Chinese rival Huawei saw smartphone sales soar by more than 20% during the same period.

"Besides regular performance upgrades in 2018 and small changes to the exterior, there has not been any major innovation that supports users to continue to change their phones at the greatly increased price", the IDC report said.

"At the same time, under the impact of China's severe macro environment and domestic brand innovation products, consumers' increasingly harsh eyes are also the reasons for Apple's continued decline in the domestic market".

Both analysts and IDC believes that Apple failed to address the problem by pushing prices higher, while ignoring the fact that the Chinese market has been contracting.

Apple revised its guidance ahead of that report in early January, when it said a weakening economy in China and the strength of the USA dollar were to blame for weaker-than-expected iPhone revenue.