In the midst of the ongoing crisis, it is clear that the tech industry has received huge hits across the world with sales of smartphones dropping for the last two months and projected to go down even further. This had been even worse for Chinese sales that were down roughly 20% year-on-year in March alone.

With the lockdown in that country, most of the production was halted, thus supply was reduced. Retail stores remained shut, leaving very few chances of device purchases. All this has even been feared to affect the production of the anticipated iPhone 12 expected to drop late this year.

However, recent reports have come out, beaming some hope that the numbers have been slightly going up compared to February. A report from Reuters states:

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“Mobile phone shipments in China in March totalled 21 million units, according to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), a government think tank. That was a more than three-fold increase from February, yet still down roughly 20% compared with March 2019.” 

Despite one of its worst months, Apple as well has gone ahead to record signs of recovery since late last month.

“Apple shipped roughly 2.5 million iPhones in China in March, a slight rebound after one of its worst months in the country ever, according to government data published on Friday.”

Even Xiaomi revealed to be getting back up to about 80% normal levels in its recent financial report. So as of now, a number of companies in China have been seeing some light in the face of a global recession.

Globally and even locally, companies have been looking to commence with operations despite the slow down. In the Kenyan market, phone companies still continue to launch new smartphones and shelf them up for sale. TECNO recently launched the Camon 15 handset as OPPO did the Reno 3. Samsung as well launched the S20 line-up in the country whereas Infinix kickstarted sale for the Note 7 model.

Even if the numbers are not reported yet for Kenya and East Africa, the shipments could tell you something about the firms’ hopes for a recovery in sales. What is certain though is that the figures aren’t expected to be as normally high just yet as they were before all this began.