The world’s biggest smartphone market is a key place for almost all smartphone manufacturers, and the new report from Digitimes Research says that the market will contract in 1Q21. China’s total smartphone shipments are expected to fall over 10% sequentially in the first quarter of 2021, after growing 19.2% in Q4 2020.

Although there was over 19% sequential growth, the smartphone shipments to the China market dropped 10.5% year-on-year, whereas the whole-year 2020 volumes slipping by 17.2% year-on-year. As Digitimes say, this is got to be due to weak demand in China’s smartphone market in Q4 2020.

Among the major Chinese smartphone brands, Honor was sold by Huawei to a Chinese government-backed consortium in 2020. On the other hand, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi continue keenly placing orders, but Huawei smartphone shipments further shrank in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Its home rivals are taking this void left by Huawei and most importantly, by Apple, who has seen a huge demand for iPhones, took a major share of the China smartphone. Interestingly, most Chinese first-tier Android smartphone brands, expect Huawei, has seen an increased ratio of exports in the quarter, resulting in weaker-than-expected growths in their domestic shipments.

It is said that the China smartphone market’s shipments will drop only by 12.5% sequentially in the Q1 of 2021 despite the poor market form.