April 25 (Reuters) -

Apple ( AAPL ) lost its crown as China's biggest smartphone

seller in the first quarter of 2024 as its smartphone shipments

fell 6.6% from a year ago amid intense competition, preliminary

data from research firm IDC showed on Thursday.

Honor and Huawei were tied for the top spot, with Honor's

market share rising to 17.1% and Huawei's share climbing to 17%,

IDC said, while the iPhone maker's market share fell to 15.6%.

The IDC declares a statistical tie when the difference

between the share of revenue or shipments between two or more

vendors is 0.1% or less.

"Apple's ( AAPL ) price promotions in the quarter were unable to

mitigate the impact of the intense competition from Android

players," Arthur Guo, senior research analyst at IDC China said

in the report.

Overall smartphone shipments in China rose 6.5% to 69.3

million units, according to IDC.

Earlier this week, data from research firm Counterpoint

showed Apple's ( AAPL ) smartphone shipments in China

tumbled

19% in the first quarter of the year, the worst performance

since 2020.

(Reporting by Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Varun H K)