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China’s smartphone market boom is coming to an end as it sees a sharp decline in demand within the continent and abroad. According to the latest data, China’s smartphone shipments in the second quarter fell 14.7 percent, which is the fifth consecutive quarterly decline, the Financial Post, an American publication, reported.

Analysts believe that the Chinese market is in deep trouble, and under the impact of multiple factors, the outlook is becoming increasingly bleak.

Earlier this week, a Bloomberg report stated that the Indian government is planning to ban Chinese phones ₹12,000 in the country.

The move is aimed at pushing the Chinese telecom giants out of the bottom segment of the world’s second-largest mobile market, the Financial Post reported.

In recent months, the Indian government has been investigating several Chinese smartphone manufacturers in India and how their Indian subsidiaries have been laundering money, diverting their profits and money from India to their Chinese offices, in order to pay less taxes and duties.

India is the second largest mobile market in the world and is soon poised to become the largest smartphone market in the world. However, the companies that dominate India’s smartphone market are mostly Chinese.

Ever since manufacturers like Xiaomi and Oppo flooded the market with affordable Android devices, Indian mobile manufacturers have languished.

This is precisely the reason why India is looking to restrict Chinese smartphone makers from selling devices cheaper than Rs 12,000 to boost its faltering domestic market, Financial Post reported.

According to data released by US research firm IDC, smartphone shipments in China fell 14.7% in the second quarter from a year earlier to 67.2 million units

It was the fifth consecutive quarter of declining shipments and the second consecutive quarter of double-digit declines, with major players such as Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo reporting sharp sales declines, the Financial Post reported.

Several factors reportedly contributed to the decline. The first factor is attributable to the sharp drop in demand caused by the strict “Zero COVID Policy”. China’s severe COVID-19 restrictions are not good for all businesses. The lockdowns disrupted retail, logistics and manufacturing.

Under the economic recession, the need to replace mobile phones has been greatly reduced, and the life cycle of smartphones has become longer and longer.

But the bigger problem, however, is that the Chinese smartphone market is highly saturated, which could spell the end of China’s 10-plus-year smartphone boom, the Financial Post reported.

At the end of last year, there were more than 1.6 billion active mobile phone accounts in China, exceeding the population of 1.4 billion. The penetration rate is much higher than the global average, resulting in intense brand competition.

Data analytics firm Canalys predicted in late July that China’s cellphone shipments this year are expected to fall well short of 300 million units, the lowest in nearly 10 years. reported Financial Post.