Sales of the iPhone in China fall 20% in Q4

(Reuters)-sales of Apple's iPhones in China fell 20% in the fourth quarter, while sales of smartphones manufactured by rival Huawei grew 23%, according to data from research company IDC industry on Monday. The report is the first to give the extent of the recent decline of Apple's sales in the world's second-largest economy, after the President Tim Cook point to China as a big factor in a rare cut in quarterly sales forecast by the company last month. Apple details iPhone shipments numbers in its quarterly results, which means that channel checks and searches made by companies such as IDC are usually the clearest indicator of changes in sales. The figures in the report showed a fall of 19,9% in Apple's smartphones last quarter of 2018, while those of Huawei grew 23,3%. This has reduced the market share of Apple to 11,5%, compared with 12,9% a year earlier, according to the report. " Regular performance updates in 2018 and small changes on the outside, there was no great innovations to support users to continue changing their phones for a very high price, "the report said. A separate report from another common source of industry, the Counterpoint, of Hong Kong, confirmed earlier this month a similar sharp drop in sales in India-another big emerging market in which Apple is struggling. The Countpoint said that iPhone sales in the quarter, including the festival of Diwali, with heavy sales in India, fell 25% in the year, reducing the total sales in 2018 to 1.7 million units compared with 3,200,001 the year before.