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China placed curbs on travel and asked residents to avoid public
places in late January, just ahead of the Lunar New Year
festival, a major gift-giving holiday. Those restrictions stayed
largely in place through most of February.
In total, mobile phone brands shipped a total of 6.34 million
devices in February, down 54.7% from 14 million in the same
month last year, data from the China Academy of Information and
Communications Technology showed (CAICT).
It was also the lowest level for February since at least 2012,
when CAICT started publishing data.
Android brands, which include devices made by Huawei
Technologies and Xiaomi, accounted for most of the drop, as they
collectively saw shipments decline from 12.72 million units in
February 2019 to 5.85 million, the data showed.
Shipments of Apple devices slumped to 494,000, from 1.27 million
in February 2019. In January, its shipments had held steady at
just over 2 million.
Research firms IDC and Canalys previously forecast that overall
smartphone shipments would drop by about 40% in the first
quarter as the virus outbreak hit demand and brought
supply-chain problems.
Apple's branded stores in China were shut for at least two weeks
in February as fears over the coronavirus outbreak mounted.
The company's chief executive, Tim Cook, wrote a letter to
investors that month warning it would not meet its initial
revenue guidance for the current quarter due to demand issues.
(Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Louise Heavens, Robert
Birsel)
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