To stimulate domestic consumption, China will subsidize the purchase of smartphones

China's efforts to promote product consumption continue. After targeting home equipment and electric vehicles in 2024, the Middle Kingdom is attacking emblematic electronic goods: smartphones, but also tablets, watches and other connected bracelets.

During a press conference organized on January 3, 2025, the Secretary General for National Development, Yuan Da, announced the extension of the policy of taking back old electronic products to these categories of devices. This involves stimulating domestic consumption to better counter possible curbs imposed by the United States on Chinese exports from 2025.

Although the details of the operation have yet to be revealed, the Chinese government is relying on the success of its subsidy system applied to household equipment. The consequences of the announcement did not take long to be felt: as reported by Wall Street Journalshares of brands such as Xiaomi saw their prices jump this Friday on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The first beneficiaries should indeed be national brands, such as Vivo, Huawei and Xiaomi. If we focus on the latest statisticscovering the third quarter of 2024, Apple occupied second place in the Chinese telephone market, with 15.6% market share behind Vivo (18.6%) and ahead Huawei (15.3%), Xiaomi (14.8%) and Honor (14.6%). So many brands which today suffer from the less frequent renewal of smartphones (every two and a half to three years, on average) and which could benefit from the government initiative, as well as sales platforms such as Alibaba and J.D.