On January 15, the Ministry of Commerce issued the "Implementation Plan for New Subsidies for Mobile Phone, Tablet, and Smart Watches (Bracelets) Purchase", and the subsidy policy was quickly implemented. According to the data platform of the Ministry of Commerce’s national subsidy qualification verification system for digital products such as old-for-new and mobile phones, it shows that as of March 18, 42.193 million consumers have applied for new subsidies for digital products such as 52.251 million mobile phones, completed the purchase of 22.546 million units and sold 66.95 billion yuan. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, from January to February, the total retail sales of communication equipment was 159.4 billion yuan, an increase of 26.2% year-on-year, 10 percentage points higher than the same period in 2024, ranking first among the 16 major consumer goods growth rates.
It is understood that the new subsidy policies for mobile phone purchases began to be implemented nationwide on January 20. Third-party data showed that the national mobile phone sales exceeded 10 million units in the first week of the policy launch, the highest sales week since 2020; a month-on-month increase of 73.8%, the highest growth since 2018. Since the implementation of the policy, the average weekly sales volume and sales of mobile phones under 6,000 yuan have increased by 13.7% and 23.5% respectively compared with the previous month before the implementation of the policy. Driven by the subsidy policy, the mobile phone consumer market structure has migrated to the mid-to-high-end. Data from platform enterprises show that the market share of mobile phones from 2,000 yuan to 4,000 yuan and 4,000 yuan to 6,000 yuan was 22.1% and 22.3%, respectively, an increase of 8.1 percentage points and 6.9 percentage points respectively from before subsidy.
According to third-party statistics, from December 2024 to the Spring Festival in 2025, more than 500 models were lowered, with an average drop of 9%. Among them, 26 models originally priced at more than 6,000 yuan were reduced to less than 6,000 yuan after the policy was launched. The policy has promoted the AI function of mobile phones to become a hot topic of attention for consumers. In the first week of the policy launch, the sales of mobile phones equipped with AI model functions increased by 102.5% month-on-month.
According to preliminary statistics, there are more than 33,000 offline market entities participating in the new subsidy policy for mobile phones and other digital products nationwide, more than 70,000 stores, and more than 350,000 employees. Up to now, the online and offline sales volume of mobile phones accounted for 33% and 67% respectively.
(CCTV reporter Song Wan)
