BEIJING, May 12 (Reuters) - Chinese shipments of

foreign-branded cellphones, including Apple Inc's ( AAPL )

iPhones, dropped by 49.6% year on year in March, according to

data released on Monday by a government-affiliated research

company.

Calculations based on the data from the China Academy of

Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) showed that

March shipments of foreign-branded phones in China decreased to

1.887 million units from 3.747 million a year earlier.