Ministry of Commerce: Nearly 42.2 million people applied for digital product purchase subsidies, driving sales of 66.95 billion yuan

The Ministry of Commerce issued the "Implementation Plan for Subsidies for New Purchases of Mobile Phones, Tablets, and Smart Watches (Bracelets)", and the subsidy policy was quickly implemented. The Ministry of Commerce's national home appliance trade-in and mobile phone and other digital product purchase subsidy qualification verification system data platform shows that as of March 18, 42.193 million consumers have applied for 52.251 million mobile phones and other digital products purchase subsidies, and completed the purchase of 22.546 million pieces, with sales of 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, a year-on-year increase of 26.2%, 10 percentage points higher than the same period in 2024, ranking first among the growth rates of 16 major categories of consumer goods. It is understood that the policy of subsidies for new purchases of mobile phones and other products began to be implemented nationwide on January 20. Third-party data shows that the national mobile phone sales exceeded 10 million units in the first week of the policy launch, which is the highest sales week since 2020; the month-on-month increase was 73.8%, the highest increase since 2018. Since the implementation of the policy, the average weekly sales volume and sales of mobile phones below 6,000 yuan have increased by 13.7% and 23.5% respectively compared with the period before the implementation of the policy . Driven by the subsidy policy, the structure of the mobile phone consumption market has shifted to the middle and high-end. Platform enterprise data show that the market share of mobile phones priced from 2,000 yuan to 4,000 yuan and from 4,000 yuan to 6,000 yuan is 22.1% and 22.3% respectively, an increase of 8.1 percentage points and 6.9 percentage points respectively compared with before the subsidy. According to third-party statistics, from December 2024 to the Spring Festival of 2025, more than 500 models will reduce their prices, with an average decrease of 9%. Among them, 26 models with an original price of more than 6,000 yuan will be reduced to less than 6,000 yuan after the policy is launched. The policy has promoted the AI function of mobile phones to become a hot topic for consumers. In the first week of the policy, the sales of mobile phones equipped with AI large model functions increased by 102.5% month-on-month. According to preliminary statistics, there are more than 33,000 offline market entities and more than 70,000 stores nationwide that participate in the subsidy policy for the purchase of new mobile phones and other digital products, and more than 350,000 employees. As of now, online and offline sales of mobile phones account for 33% and 67% respectively.

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