China’s smartphone market recorded 65.7 million shipments in the second quarter of 2023, a 2.1% decline from the same quarter a year earlier, according to IDC. That figure counts shipments, not phones bought by consumers. IDC linked the decline to sluggish consumer demand, which outweighed heavier discounting by vendors and e-commerce operators.
What IDC’s 2.1% decline measures
The result covers smartphone shipments in China from April through June 2023, compared with shipments in April through June 2022. IDC reported 65.7 million units, down 2.1% year over year, in its Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. IDC’s Q2 2023 release reports the estimate.
Shipments are units moving through the supply chain; they are not a direct tally of retail purchases or individual consumers’ phone sales. The figure therefore describes the market’s shipment volume, not precisely how many devices people purchased during the quarter.
Why shipments fell despite discounts
IDC said sluggish recovery in consumer demand offset larger discounts offered by phone vendors and e-commerce operators. In other words, promotions did not overcome the underlying softness in demand. IDC also described the more-than-5% drop in smartphone sales during China’s 618 online shopping festival as discouraging and expected the difficult market environment to persist in the short term. IDC’s first-half 2023 report discusses the festival and broader market conditions.
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The 618 sales decline and the quarterly shipment decline are different measures: one refers to sales during a shopping event, while the other covers shipments across the full quarter. They should not be read as interchangeable percentages.
How the quarter fit into the first half of 2023
For the first half of 2023, IDC reported 130.9 million smartphone shipments in China, down 7.3% year over year. The Q2 decline was narrower than the decline in the preceding quarter, but the half-year total remained below the comparable 2022 period. These figures describe shipment volume and year-over-year change, not consumer spending or phone prices.
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Vendor results differed from the overall market
The market-wide contraction did not mean every brand was shrinking. IDC said Oppo led the Q2 2023 market, while Huawei returned to the top five and tied with Xiaomi. Huawei and Apple were the only vendors in that top-five group with positive year-over-year growth. IDC linked Huawei’s performance to improved product-launch timing and the P60 series and foldable Mate X3; it attributed Apple’s growth to discounts on the iPhone 14 series. IDC’s vendor results provide that context.
IDC Asia/Pacific Client Devices Senior Research Manager Will Wong said weak demand was not the only challenge for leading vendors, pointing to Huawei’s comeback and the potential for more high-end competition. He expected rivalry to intensify around product launches and the Singles’ Day shopping festival. These vendor developments help explain competitive pressure, but they do not change what the 2.1% market-wide shipment figure measures.
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How to read the figure alongside later data
A later IDC release put China’s Q2 2026 smartphone shipments at roughly 66 million units, down 4.3% year over year. That is a separate quarter and comparison; it does not revise the Q2 2023 estimate. IDC’s smartphone market-share page presents the later market context.
IDC’s public release names its tracker and reports the estimates, but it does not provide the detailed sampling method, confidence interval or a Q2 2023 revision history. The figures are best understood as IDC’s market estimates for the stated periods and metric.
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