China’s smartphone vendors saw an end to three consecutive months of shipment contraction in April, as factories and stores reopened amid a relaxation of coronavirus-related restrictions.

In the fourth month of this year, China’s smartphone shipments totaled 40.78 million units, representing a year-on-year increase of 17.2%, according to a report released Tuesday by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), a think tank affiliated with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The country’s smartphone shipments saw year-on-year declines of 36.6% in January, 54.7% in February and 21.9% in March, previous CAICT data showed.

April’s figures showed early signs of a recovery for handset makers, which have been gradually restarting production since March. In the first quarter, Huawei was the only major smartphone seller that saw slight shipment growth in its home market, delivering 30.1 million units compared with 29.9 million units over the same period last year, according to research firm Canalys.

CAICT did not give details of shipments of Android-powered smartphones in its April figures, making it difficult to know how many Apple handsets were delivered in China last month. The U.S. company shipped nearly 2.5 million iPhones in the country in March, up from about 500,000 phones a month earlier.

The number of new smartphone models released in April fell 5.9% year-on-year to 32, with many smartphone brands preferring virtual product releases as the industry continues to recover from the effects of the pandemic, the CAICT report added.

Contact reporter Ding Yi (yiding@caixin.com)

Related: Huawei Only Major Smartphone Vendor With Shipment Growth in China in First Quarter