Shipments of 5G phones in China went down 3.5 percent year on year to over 26.32 million units in January this year, data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) showed.

The volume accounted for 79.7 percent of the country's total mobile phone shipments during the period, said the CAICT, a research institute under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

In January, a total of 15 newly-released mobile phone models were 5G phones, accounting for 50 percent of all the newly-released handset models.

The data showed that China shipped 266 million units of 5G phones in 2021, surging by 63.5 percent from 2020.