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Apple’s China Market Share Shrinks as Huawei Surges, Data Shows 

A woman walks past a logo of Apple Inc in Wuhan, Hubei province July 24, 2013. (Reuters)
A woman walks past a logo of Apple Inc in Wuhan, Hubei province July 24, 2013. (Reuters)
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Apple’s China Market Share Shrinks as Huawei Surges, Data Shows 

A woman walks past a logo of Apple Inc in Wuhan, Hubei province July 24, 2013. (Reuters)
A woman walks past a logo of Apple Inc in Wuhan, Hubei province July 24, 2013. (Reuters)

Apple's market share in China shrank by two percentage points in the second quarter of 2024, as the tech giant faced intensifying competition from rivals like Huawei, according to data from market research firm Canalys.

The decline underscores the difficulties the US tech giant faces in its third-largest market.

Huawei's smartphone shipments surged 41% year-on-year in the quarter, bolstered by the launch of its new Pura 70 series in April.

The Canalys data, while not providing specific shipment figures for Apple, showed that the company's market share in China dropped to 14% in the second quarter of 2024, a decrease from 16% in the same quarter of 2023.

As a result of this decline, Apple's ranking in the Chinese smartphone market fell from third to sixth place.

Overall, China's smartphone shipments rose by 10% in the quarter, Canalys said. Vivo was the top vendor with a share of 19%, followed by Oppo, Honor and Huawei with 16%, 15% and 15% respectively.

"Domestic manufacturers have demonstrated market leadership, occupying the top five positions in the mainland Chinese market for the first time in history," said Lucas Zhong, research analyst at Canalys.

"On the other hand, Apple faces growth pressure in the Chinese market and is actively focusing on optimizing channel management."

Huawei made a comeback to the high-end smartphone segment last August with the release of a device powered by a domestically-made chip, defying US sanctions that have cut off its access to the global chipset supply chain.

In an effort to boost sales, Apple has ramped up its discounting efforts this year to entice consumers. The US company launched an aggressive campaign in May, doubling the scale of an earlier promotion in February and offering price cuts of up to 2,300 yuan ($318.84) on select iPhone models.

Analysts expect Huawei's strong performance to continue throughout the year. Canadian research firm TechInsights projected earlier this year that Huawei's overall smartphone shipments in China will exceed 50 million units in 2024, with the Pura 70 series accounting for 10 million of those shipments.

That would make Huawei the No. 1 seller with a 19% market share, up from 12% in 2023, TechInsights has said.

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Technology

Tencent's Quarterly Revenue Rises 13% on Gaming, AI Demand

FILE PHOTO: Tencent's logo is displayed at its booth at the China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) in Beijing, China, September 11, 2025. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Tencent's logo is displayed at its booth at the China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) in Beijing, China, September 11, 2025. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo
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Tencent's Quarterly Revenue Rises 13% on Gaming, AI Demand

FILE PHOTO: Tencent's logo is displayed at its booth at the China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) in Beijing, China, September 11, 2025. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Tencent's logo is displayed at its booth at the China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) in Beijing, China, September 11, 2025. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo

Tencent Holdings reported a 13% increase in fourth-quarter revenue on Wednesday, driven by strong demand for gaming and growth in its artificial intelligence services, cementing its position as China's largest social media and gaming company.

The Shenzhen-based firm posted revenue of 194.4 billion yuan ($28.3 billion) for the three months to December 31, just above the 193.5 billion yuan forecast by analysts polled by LSEG.

Quarterly net profit was 58.26 billion yuan, compared with an average estimate of 57.75 billion yuan.

Tencent has been accelerating AI ⁠investments funded by ⁠its gaming arm as it competes with rivals including Alibaba and ByteDance.

The company is embedding AI across its WeChat messaging and payment app, cloud services and gaming, drawing on an ecosystem of more than one billion users.

Domestic gaming revenue rose 15% to 38.2 billion yuan, while international gaming revenue surged ⁠32% to 21.1 billion yuan. Online advertising revenue climbed 17% to 41.1 billion yuan, boosted by AI-enhanced ad targeting.

Gaming growth was driven by newer titles including "Delta Force" and "Valorant Mobile", alongside established hits "Honor of Kings" and "Peacekeeper Elite".

Revenue in its FinTech and Business Services segment, which includes cloud computing, rose 8% to 60.8 billion yuan. Tencent does not break out cloud revenue separately.

To compete with rivals such as Alibaba Group and ByteDance, Tencent ramped up AI talent acquisition, including hiring ⁠former OpenAI ⁠researcher Yao Shunyu to lead the development of its proprietary Hunyuan large language model.

It spent 1 billion yuan promoting its Yuanbao AI chatbot during the Lunar New Year holiday period to gain market share in China's increasingly crowded AI sector, Reuters reported.

This month, it launched its "OpenClaw" AI product suite, comprising QClaw for individual users, Lighthouse for developers and WorkBuddy for enterprises, as competition intensifies around AI agents - software that can perform multi-step tasks autonomously.

Capital expenditure for 2025 totaled 79.2 billion yuan, compared to 76.8 billion yuan in 2024.

Technology

Samsung Elec and AMD Sign MoU on AI Memory, Explore Foundry Partnership

FILE PHOTO: The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at the company's store in Seoul, South Korea, April 15, 2025. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at the company's store in Seoul, South Korea, April 15, 2025. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo
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Samsung Elec and AMD Sign MoU on AI Memory, Explore Foundry Partnership

FILE PHOTO: The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at the company's store in Seoul, South Korea, April 15, 2025. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at the company's store in Seoul, South Korea, April 15, 2025. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo

Samsung Electronics and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) signed a memorandum of understanding to expand their strategic partnership on memory chip supplies for artificial intelligence infrastructure, the companies said on Wednesday.

The agreement will focus on supplying Samsung's next-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM4) for AMD's upcoming Instinct MI455X AI accelerators, as well as optimized DDR5 memory for AMD's sixth-generation EPYC processors, they said in a statement.

The companies will also discuss opportunities for a foundry partnership, under which Samsung could provide contract chip manufacturing services ⁠for next-generation AMD ⁠products.

Under the agreement, Samsung will position itself as a key HBM4 supplier for AMD's next-generation AI GPUs, Reuters reported. The South Korean firm has already been a primary HBM supplier for AMD, supplying HBM3E chips used in AMD's MI350X and MI355X accelerators.

The ⁠agreement comes during the week of Nvidia's annual developer conference GTC, where CEO Jensen Huang on Monday announced a foundry partnership with the Korean firm and praised its HBM4 chips.

The tie-up highlights a broader race among global chipmakers to lock in long-term supply partnerships for advanced memory, as AI-driven demand reshapes the semiconductor industry and tightens supply of HBM chips.

Last month, AMD said it had agreed ⁠to sell ⁠up to $60 billion worth of AI chips to Meta Platforms over five years, a deal that allows the Facebook owner to purchase as much as 10% of the chips. AMD signed a similar deal with OpenAI last year.

Samsung, the world's largest memory chipmaker, has been seeking to narrow the gap with rivals in the fast-growing HBM segment. It holds about a 22% share of the global HBM market, compared with market leader SK Hynix's 57%, according to Counterpoint.

Technology

Nvidia Making AI Module for Outer Space

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says artificial intelligence powered by the company's graphics processing units is quickly infusing nearly everything from Disney character robots to data centers that may one day be orbiting the planet. JOSH EDELSON / AFP
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says artificial intelligence powered by the company's graphics processing units is quickly infusing nearly everything from Disney character robots to data centers that may one day be orbiting the planet. JOSH EDELSON / AFP
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Nvidia Making AI Module for Outer Space

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says artificial intelligence powered by the company's graphics processing units is quickly infusing nearly everything from Disney character robots to data centers that may one day be orbiting the planet. JOSH EDELSON / AFP
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says artificial intelligence powered by the company's graphics processing units is quickly infusing nearly everything from Disney character robots to data centers that may one day be orbiting the planet. JOSH EDELSON / AFP

Nvidia chief Jensen Huang on Monday said the leading artificial intelligence chip maker is heading for space with a goal of powering orbiting data centers.

An Nvidia graphics processing unit (GPU) was launched into space late last year by startup Starcloud in what was touted as an off-planet debut for the technology, but now Nvidia is creating a module intended as a building block for data centers there.

"We're working with our partners on a new computer called Vera Rubin Space One," Huang said as he kicked off the GPU-maker's annual developers conference in Silicon Valley.

"It's going to go out to space and start data centers."

Partners in the project include Starcloud, which is planning a November satellite launch that will mark the "cosmic debut" of the new Nvidia module.

A Starcloud-1 satellite, about the size of a small refrigerator, is expected to be packed with 100 times more computing power than any previous space-based operation.

"In 10 years, nearly all new data centers will be being built in outer space," predicted Starcloud co-founder and chief Philip Johnston.

The startup explained that it plans to power Google AI with the Nvidia GPUs to show that large language models can run in outer space.

Nvidia described the Vera Rubin module as being optimized for AI, enabling real-time sensing, decision making, and autonomous functioning.

"Space computing, the final frontier, has arrived," Huang said.

"With our partners, we're extending Nvidia beyond our planet - boldly taking intelligence where it's never gone before."

Tech firms are floating the idea of building data centers in space and tapping into the sun's energy to meet out-of-this-world power demands in a fierce artificial intelligence race.

More than a dozen startups, aerospace leaders, and major tech firms are involved in the development, testing, or planning of space-based data centers.

The big draw of space for data centers is power supply, with the option of synchronizing satellites to the sun's orbit to ensure constant light beaming onto solar panels.

Building in space also avoids the challenges of acquiring land and meeting local regulations or community resistance to projects.

Critical technical aspects of such operations need to be resolved, however, particularly damage to the orbiting data centers from high levels of radiation and extreme temperatures, and the danger of them being hit by space junk.