Rising memory prices continue to weigh on the global smartphone market, with shipments in China alone falling 10% year over year in Q3. Here are the details.

A few days ago, IDC reported that smartphone shipments in China fell 15.4% year over year in Q3 2026, with Apple increasing its share of that total to 17.8% despite a 4.3% decline in iPhone shipments.

The report echoed the broader global trend, with IDC estimating that worldwide smartphone shipments fell a record 22% year over year during the quarter, while Apple recorded the smallest decline among the top five manufacturers, at just 4%.

Now, a new report from Counterpoint Research paints a similar picture of China’s smartphone market in Q3, although its estimates differ somewhat from IDC’s.

According to the report, smartphone shipments in China hit a 14-year low during Q3 2026, with a 10% decline year over year.

Apple, on the other hand, accounted for 19.5% of smartphone shipments in China during the period, a 4.8-percentage-point increase year over year. The company was second only to Huawei, which held a 21.3% share, up 5.3 percentage points from a year earlier.

In fact, these were the only two among the top six brands to gain shipment share year over year, with vivo down 2.8 percentage points to 15.2%, OPPO down 1.3 points to 15.1%, Xiaomi down 1.6 points to 13.5%, HONOR down 2.2 points to 12.7%, and other manufacturers collectively down 2 points to 2.8%.

Notably, Apple went from sixth to second place in overall shipments, which Counterpoint attributes in part to the strong launch of the iPhone 18 Pro series:

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