Apple’s iPhone 17 lineup was the top-selling smartphone brand during China’s “Singles Day” shopping festival accounting for 26% of all smartphone sales, according to data from a new report from Counterpoint Research shared by Reuters.
The data shows that while smartphone sales rose just 3% year-over-year, the iPhone alone prevented the market from seeing what would otherwise have been a 5% annual decline all on its own.
Counterpoint says demand for the iPhone 17 lineup was particularly strong during the festival, which came to an end on November 11. Apple has steadily outpaced the wider Chinese smartphone market over recent months, after years of cooling demand.
Data provider Syntun told Reuters that total Singles Day sales across all major e-commerce platforms reached 1.70 trillion yuan ($240 billion), up from 1.44 trillion yuan last year, which had a shorter promotional window.
As for the other smartphone brands, Xiaomi held the second-largest share with 17%, though its sales also declined year-over-year due to the earlier release timing of the Xiaomi 17 series. Huawei saw its share drop to 13% from 17% a year ago. Its new flagship Mate 80 launched too late to make a dent during the festival.
What is Singles Day?
According to Wikipedia, Singles Day is an unofficial Chinese holiday for people who are not in a relationship. The date, 11 November (11/11), was chosen because the numeral 1 resembles a bare stick, which is Chinese Internet slang for an unmarried man. The four “1”s also refer to the demographic group of single people.
Originally, the date was celebrated by a small group of college bachelors, but in 2009 Alibaba’s CEO Daniel Zhang began to use the day as a 24-hour holiday that offered online shopping discounts and offline entertainment.
The holiday has now become the largest physical retail and online shopping day in the world, and has spread to Southeast Asia.
