Chinese Smartphone Market Shows Hope Of Positive Recovery In May During 6.18 Festival

The world's biggest smartphone market, China, showed positive signs of improvement in May thanks to China's second-biggest shopping festival, 6.18. 

Smartphone shipments grew 22.6% in May, a sharp acceleration vs. April 2023, as per Bloomberg. 

Also, phone makers shipped 25.2 million handsets in May, with the festival that features discounts from late May to June driving sales in China. 

As per the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the festival must have aided manufacturers in offloading devices, marking an increase of over 4 million units compared to the same period a year earlier.

The Chinese smartphone market has been suffering due to unsold inventory, and even with positive data in May, the growth rate is down 2.6% from January-May 2023. 

Major smartphone hardware supplier Sony Group Corp SONY, which provides image sensors for Apple Inc's AAPL iPhone cameras, warned they don't expect demand to recover this year.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons