Apple’s Huge Surge in China

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 22, 9:15AM EST

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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) led in both smartphone market share and shipment growth in China in the fourth quarter of 2025.
The strong performance comes despite Apple not having an artificial intelligence product in the market.

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Apple’s Huge Surge in China — © 2015 Visual China Group / Getty Images News via Getty Images

Research firm Counterpoint has posted its smartphone data for China in the fourth quarter of 2025. Its measurement is shipments rather than sales. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) is the clear winner in the world’s largest smartphone market. It led in both market share and shipment growth. Most importantly, it bested the performance of the local smartphone makers.

In the fourth quarter, Apple’s market share was 21.8%, which was up by 28% from the same quarter the year before. Counterpoint Senior Analyst Ivan Lam remarked:

Apple led China’s smartphone market in Q4 with a 22% share, driven by strong traction for the iPhone 17 series and an accelerated supply ramp. The Pro series, with its distinctive new camera design, and the base variants, with double the storage of last year’s equivalent but at the same price, have all seen a strong market response.

This gain came at the expense of Huawei and Vivo. Huawei’s market share fell by 13.7% to 14.6%. Vivo’s dropped 12.9% to 15.7%.

Apple’s numbers are particularly strong given that it does not have an artificial intelligence product in the market. Counterpoint reported in the middle of last year that AI had become an important driver of industry shipments. The AI for most phones was based on local offerings, particularly DeepSeek.

Apple will not have a real AI product until later this year, when the iPhone will include a version of Google’s Gemini. It is impressive that the delay clearly has not dented the company’s China shipments.

However, Apple continues to have a problem in China. In its most recently reported quarter, Greater China revenue dropped to $14.5 billion from $15 billion year over year. Yet, iPhone sales worldwide rose from $46.2 billion to $49.0 billion.

If Apple can gain market share in China without an AI product, it has a chance to hold its lead once the feature is added later this year.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.