China's smartphone shipments fell 4.3% to 66 million units in the second quarter from a year earlier, as many manufacturers hiked prices to reflect rising memory and component costs, research firm IDC said on Tuesday. It was the fifth straight quarterly decline, and first-half shipments were down 4.2% from a year earlier. Huawei Technologies and Apple were the only vendors to post growth in the quarter, with shipments up 19.4% and 24.4%, respectively. "Huawei and Apple held their prices steady while competitors were raising theirs, and that gave hesitant buyers a reason to go ahead and purchase in a quarter when most of the market was giving them a reason to wait," said Arthur Guo, a senior analyst at IDC China. Huawei ranked first with a 22.6% market share, while Apple came second with an 18.1% share. Xiaomi , which ranked fifth, saw its second-quarter shipments down 21.7%, with Oppo and Vivo seeing shipments fall 9.7% and 11.4%, respectively. Most Android vendors raised prices or cut back on budget models in response to surging memory chips and other component costs, discouraging consumers from upgrading. The fading effect of government subsidies also removed a prop that had supported demand in earlier quarters, IDC said.
