China’s mobile phone shipments dipped 6.2 per cent to 389 million units in 2019, according to a report by the China Academy of Information and Communi-cations Technology (CAICT).

In December alone, mobile phone shipments reached 30.44 million units, down 14.7 per cent from the same period last year, said CAICT, a research institute under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Throughout the year, 4G phones took the lion’s share of the total shipments with 359 million units produced, while 5G phones shipments came in at 13.77 million units, the CAICT said.

Meanwhile, smartphone shipments slipped 4.7 per cent year on year to 372 million units, accounting for 95.6 per cent of the gross shipments in 2019.

The country’s domestic brands dominated mobile phone shipments in 2019, with those made by Chinese manufacturers hitting 352 million units and making up 90.7 per cent of the total shipments of the year.