iPhone sales slide in China as a homegrown challenger takes a bite out of Apple's

market share. Live from the BBC World Service. This is the Marketplace Morning

Report, Will Bain in for Leanna Byrne again today, great as always to have your company.

China long been a key driver of growth for firms like Apple, so a warning from the

researcher's counterpoint today that it sales sharply dropped off to start the year could

be reason for concern. Perhaps more so the sharp rise in sales for Chinese domestic rival

Huawei. Here's the BBC's Monica Miller to explain what's going on.

We've discussed this before.

Chinese consumers just aren't feeling confident right now as the country's economy has started to slow down.

So that means buying expensive items or really not in their budget at this point.

So the price of an iPhone, which is at the higher end of the smartphone market,

while it is facing stiff competition from domestic brands like Huawei, a much cheaper brand.

Huawei saw its sales jump 64% at its home market.

Now one analyst for the research firm Counterpoint who crunched these numbers said that

Apple's share of the Chinese smartphone market

dropped almost 16% from 19% last year. Now that puts it in fourth place as it fell from the number two

spot. A huge jump for Huawei.

And this is a firm, I mean, regular listens will be well aware

that's basically faced sanctions, pressure, political questions,

almost everywhere it's tried to work.

So how is it managing to perform so strongly still?

Well, exactly.

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