Global cellphone manufacturer Transsion Holdings, ranked fourth in terms of global shipment volume, experienced a significant decrease in net profit in 2025 due to high supply chain costs and intensified competition. As a result, its market value plummeted by over 60% from its historical peak. Additionally, China’s cellphone exports experienced a “double decline” in volume and value last year, reaching a new low not seen since 2010.
**Transsion Holdings**, also known as Transsion, is a Shenzhen-based cellphone company that includes brands such as TECNO, Infinix, and Itel. They mainly target overseas markets with their entry-level to mid-range smartphones, priced at just a few hundred Chinese yuan. The company has been dubbed the “King of African Cellphones” as its popularity in African countries surpasses that in mainland China, commanding a dominant market share of around 50% in recent years, solidifying its position in the region.
According to data from research firm Omdia, in the third quarter of 2025, Transsion climbed to fourth place globally in terms of cellphone shipments (including smartphones and feature phones), reaching a total of 28.6 million units.
The downward trend in Transsion Holdings’ profits throughout 2025 was not a short-term fluctuation but a continuous decline observed across the entire year. In the first quarter, the company saw a 25.45% year-on-year drop in revenue, a drastic 69.87% plunge in net profit attributable to shareholders, and a staggering 74.64% decrease in adjusted net profit, setting a challenging tone for the year.
Despite a 22.6% quarter-on-quarter revenue increase in the third quarter, the cumulative net profit for the first three quarters still dropped by 44.97%. By the end of the year, the company’s basic earnings per share stood at 2.26 yuan, signaling a broad weakening in its financial performance metrics.
Transsion Holdings attributed its significant profit decline to two core reasons: soaring supply chain costs, driven by substantial price hikes in key components like storage during 2025, directly inflating production costs, and intensified market competition accompanied by increased investments to address the fierce competition in emerging markets in Africa and globally through enhanced research and development and sales initiatives.
Moreover, the core African market of Transsion faces increasing competition from brands like Xiaomi and Honor. Although Transsion maintained a leading market share of 51% in Africa in 2025, the growth momentum showed signs of exhaustion. Emerging markets in Southeast Asia and Latin America also encountered growth bottlenecks, with Latin America witnessing a significant 19% year-on-year decline in shipments, resulting in a continuous erosion of market share.
The overall decline in performance of Transsion Holdings mirrors a broader trend in the Chinese cellphone industry. The latest cellphone market tracking report from international data company IDC revealed that China’s smartphone market saw a 0.6% year-on-year decrease in shipments in 2025, with exports hitting a 15-year low.
Citing data from China’s General Administration of Customs, the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products reported that in 2025, China’s cellphone exports experienced a “double decline” in both volume and value, with exports plunging by 7.7% year-on-year to 751 million units, hitting a new low since 2010 and decreasing by nearly 600 million units from the peak of 1.343 billion units in 2015.
Export value dropped by 9.4% year-on-year to $121.69 billion, marking the fourth consecutive year of decline, with the average export price decreasing by 1.9% to $162 per unit. In December 2025 alone, exports decreased by 3.6% year-on-year to 68.297 million units, marking the ninth consecutive month of decline.
Since April 2025, the impact of US tariff policies has led Apple to speed up the transfer of iPhone production orders away from China, weakening the export unit price of Chinese cellphones and contributing to the year-end low in the total export value of Chinese cellphones.