China’s smartphone vendors suffered a third straight month of shipment contraction in March, as the coronavirus outbreak crippled production and dampened consumption.

During the month, China’s smartphone shipments totaled 21 million units, down 21.9% year-on-year, according to a report released Monday by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), a think tank affiliated with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). The March decline is more modest than that in February and January, when smartphone shipments fell 54.7% and 36.6%, respectively.

Of all smartphones shipped in March, nearly 88% were Android-powered handsets, meaning that Apple shipped roughly 2.5 million iPhones in China during the period, the report said. In February, Apple shipped just about 500,000 phones in China.

Also the number of new smartphone models released in March fell 15% to 34, with many smartphone brands like Huawei moving their new product releases online, the reported added.

Operations of phone manufacturing facilities, brick-and-mortar stores and e-commerce logistics in China gradually returned to normal in March as the coronavirus outbreak has shown signs of leveling off in the country.

Taking the first three months of 2020 together, China’s smartphone shipments dropped 34.7% year-on-year to 47.7 million units in the first quarter, according to the CAICT, milder than research firm IDC’s previous estimate for a decline of 40% for the quarter.

Contact reporter Ding Yi (yiding@caixin.com)

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