Handset shipments in China continued to decline in August, falling 13.3 per cent compared with the same month of 2016 to 41.2 million units.

Smartphones shipments decreased 17.1 per cent to 36.9 million units, according to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT).

For the first eight months of 2017, total handset shipments slipped 8.3 per cent year-on-year to 323 million units and smartphone shipments were down 7.4 per cent to 303 million units, C114.net reported.

Shipments of 4G handsets accounted for 94 per cent of the total despite falling 6.7 per cent to 304 million.

For the January to August period, domestic-brand handset shipments dropped 7.7 per cent to 293 million units and accounted for 90.8 per cent of the total. In August shipments of local-brand handsets dropped 14.8 per cent to 38.1 million units, the CAICT report said.