The market for phones in China regained some sense of normalcy in April 2020

The fortunes of the smartphone market seem to have taken a real hit from the Covid-19 pandemic, shrinking by an estimated 13% YoY in 1Q2020. However, according to a new study published by the China Information and Communications Technology Institute (CAIST), there may be evidence that it could bounce back in short order.

This new report showed that these figures fell sharply during the first 3 months of the year; for example, shipments fell by about 39% YoY during January, the first month in which the need for a lock-down became truly apparent.

Therefore, phone shipments in China for January through April 2020 fell an average of 20.1% YoY. April 2020 phone shipments in this country rose 14.2% YoY, however. This may have been helped by a 14.3% increase in the new models (48 in total) available on this market compared to those in the same month of 2019.

Indeed, consumers were introduced to a number of compelling launches, not the least of which were the high-end iQOO Neo3, Honor's 30 series and the OnePlus 8 and 8 Pro. Therefore, this report may constitute an early sign that the mobile device industry may see a more global regeneration soon.