Apple is on its way to becoming the biggest smartphone seller in China

Apple CEO Tim Cook earlier this year hailed the company’s holiday quarter as “the best iPhone quarter in history in Greater China,” with sales jumping 38%. New data for the first quarter of 2026 suggests Apple’s success in the world’s largest smartphone market is continuing, with shipments up double digits even as overall smartphone sales in China declined. That growth was fueled in part by the iPhone 17 itself, whose new design and colors helped Apple capitalize on a massive upgrade cycle.

The result: Apple’s smartphone shipment market share jumped to 19% in Q1 — typically a weak quarter for Apple — putting it just behind China’s own Huawei. And analysts expect Apple’s string of luck to continue, even as Cook, who is largely responsible for Apple’s success in China, steps down as CEO.

“Apple will very likely become number one in China,” Francisco Jeronimo, vice president of client devices at IDC, told Sherwood News, noting that in the first quarter, the gap between Huawei and Apple’s market share was less than 1% — a vulnerability exacerbated by recent launch delays for Huawei’s latest Mate 80 series. He estimates that Apple could take the top spot as early as the end of the year.

How did Apple get to this spot, when many American tech companies struggle to gain a foothold or even access to the Chinese market? There are two main reasons: one old, one new.

Apple became such a strong brand in China partly because the iPhone is manufactured in China, a move driven and nurtured by Cook that not only made Apple a household name there, but unintentionally set off a wave of copycats that also further boosted Apple’s cachet.

“Manufacturers in China learned how to build iPhones and started replicating that design,” Jeronimo said. “That gave consumers an option to buy a device that is not an iPhone, but looks exactly as an iPhone.”

Meanwhile, those who could afford the real thing bought the actual iPhone.

The result was a powerful dual effect: Apple’s design became the standard across China’s smartphone market, while the iPhone itself remained a premium, aspirational product. Building its devices in China also gave Apple the relationships and footing needed to operate in the lucrative market in the first place. Even as cheaper look-alikes spread, they reinforced demand for the real thing, helping cement the iPhone as a status symbol that consumers continue to trade up to, even in a slowing market.

More recently, rising memory costs have helped put the aspirational iPhone within reach for more consumers. As lower-end smartphone makers are forced to raise prices by roughly 30% to 50%, Apple has used its leverage over suppliers to keep its own prices relatively stable. Coupled with expanded Chinese smartphone subsidies, that has brought iPhones much closer in price to competing devices, making the trade-up easier to justify.

“Memory inflation is forcing many Chinese brands into a loss-leader pricing mentality just to maintain volume — Apple doesn’t face the same structural pressure,” Ivan Lam, a senior analyst at Counterpoint Research, told Sherwood. The situation has “narrowed the price gap with iPhone and made Apple’s value case even cleaner.”

Going forward, analysts expect Apple’s winning streak to continue.

For one, Cook is staying on as Apple’s executive chairman, where he can continue the diplomacy that helped preserve Apple’s standing in both China and the United States.

Apple also has another potential tailwind on the horizon: it is expected to release a foldable phone this fall, and China is already the world’s biggest market for foldables.