According to a report published by Taiwanese website Digitimes, Chinese and multinational electronics companies have reportedly manufactured well over 761 million mobile handsets in China in the first half of the current calendar year. While the grand total of 761.788 million does look impressive at first glance, the tally reportedly falls short of last year’s aggregate by 4.5 percent, according to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). The report however fails to clarify how many of the devices are smartphones and how many are feature phones. The report also goes on to state that the country’s television manufacturers have produced 70.582 million devices in the same period, which is actually an increase of 2.7 percent over last year’s count. 66.141 million of these television sets happen to be of the LCD variety, which is a growth of 2.1 percent over last year.
Electronic device makers have also reportedly manufactured 9.663 million digital cameras during H1, 2015, which was down a whopping 20.2 percent, according to the MIIT. Although disappointing for consumer electronics vendors, the trend is not entirely unexpected. With ever-improving smartphone cameras, the erstwhile standalone digital camera is becoming a bit of an endangered species. Today, it’s more of a niche gadget for photography enthusiasts rather than the mainstream user, whose imaging needs are increasingly being met by the twin cams on their smartphones. Some industry watchers expect the trend of lower digital camera sales to continue in the near future.
The report released by the MIIT also sheds some light on PC shipments in the same period, but somewhat expectedly, the news continues to be gloomy for the sector. The first six months of the year saw the country churn out only 145.031 million PCs, which is a massive slide of 11.7 percent year-on-year. Notebook production was relatively less hit compared to desktops, as the number of laptops manufactured in the country saw a drop of 8.6 percent, which is comparatively better than the overall scenario. Of course, industry watchers expect the trend to reverse in the near future, when a lot of pent-up demand is expected to be addressed with the impending release of Windows 10. Which is what many would-be PC buyers have been waiting for, what with Microsoft’s previous two iterations of Windows having been unmitigated disasters commercially.