iPhone cade dalla posizione 1ª a quella 3ª in Cina, mentre Apple affronta difficoltà nel lancio delle funzionalità di intelligenza artificiale.

The iPhone has lost its crown as the best-selling mobile phone in China, falling to third place in recent market intelligence data.

One of the factors is the company's struggle to launch Apple Intelligence features in the country after failing to obtain authorization to use its own generative AI model there.

Canalys reports that iPhone shipments in China have decreased by 25% compared to the previous year in the fourth quarter.

Vivo has dominated the market for the year with a share of 17%, shipping 49.3 million units. Huawei placed second with shipments of 46.0 million units, recording a notable growth of 37% compared to the previous year. Apple, OPPO, and HONOR occupied third, fourth, and fifth place respectively, each with a market share of 15%.

This means that Apple's market share has fallen from 19% in 2023 to first place in 2024, sharing the third position with Oppo and Honor, each with a share of 15%.

Local brands were able to offer AI features, while Apple has not yet concluded an agreement to launch Apple Intelligence. The Financial Times cites this as a key factor in the renewal of fortunes.

The figures emerge as the American technology company faces increasing pressure from local luxury smartphone brands, particularly Huawei, which benefited from patriotic purchases and the ability to introduce AI-based features into their devices. The Apple Intelligence service is not available in the Chinese territory.

As we have already mentioned, China requires all generative AI models to have government approval to maintain its tight control over online information sources within the country. Many existing Western platforms are blocked by the Great Firewall – including Facebook, X, and Wikipedia – and Google has left the country instead of ceding to censorship.

The government stated that launching Apple Intelligence in China would be a 'difficult and long process' unless the iPhone factory collaborated with a local AI company. Collaborating with a Chinese partner would have been 'simple and direct' instead.

Apple is reportedly in talks with Tencent and ByteDance for the use of their AI models, but it has been reported that little progress has been made.

Image of Yaozhi Lin on Unsplas