Gasgoo.com (Shanghai July 16) - With the China's major manufacturers having released their performance reports for the first half of 2014, insiders have begun analyzing prospects for the remainder of the year. According to statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, year-on-year growth rates for passenger automobile production and sales volumes for the first half of the year were 9.6 percent and 8.36 percent, respectively. These rates are slightly lower than similar rates reported a year ago.
The CAAM predicts sales growth this year to finish around eight percent this year. Two major trends were evident over the first half of the year. First, multinational brands have managed to sustain growth rates in the double digits. Secondly, own brand passenger automobile and sedan sales began exhibiting negative growth in June.
On the multinational manufacturers' side, Volkswagen's growth rate in the Chinese market was exceptionally notable. A total of 1.75 million German brand passenger automobiles were sold in the country over the first half of the year, accounting for 28.47 percent of all passenger automobile sales. The two Sino-German joint ventures in the country, Shanghai VW and FAW-VW, sold 940,478 and 906,208 vehicles, respectively. Both joint ventures achieved year-on-year growth of around 20 percent.
Although Japanese manufacturers are slowly recovering, many still have yet to achieve 50 percent of their ambitious 2014 sales targets.
Toyota has managed to sell 465,900 vehicles over the first half of the year, less than half of the 1.1 million vehicles it aims to sell by the end of this year. Toyota hopes that the New Corolla and Levin, released in June and July respectively, will help boost its performance in the latter half of the year.
Nissan has actually managed to achieve over half of its 2014 sales target. The New X-Trail, which was released in March, has helped Nissan sell 620,400 vehicles over the first six months this year.
Mazda has seen its Chinese sales grow 37 percent in June. The manufacturer sold 98,852 vehicles over the first half of the year, completing nearly half of its 200,000 sales target for the year.
On the other side, own brands manufacturers' market shares continued a fall that began last September. The China Association of Automobile Manufacturers commented that own brands' sales performance over the first half of the year was "very poor". A total of 3.63 million domestic own brand passenger automobiles were sold over the first half of the year, growing 1.78 percent from the previous year. Domestic own brand manufacturers' passenger automobile sales accounted for 37.68 percent of all passenger automobile sales, down 3.48 percent from the previous year.
Sales of domestic own brand sedans were especially poor. 1.36 million own brand sedans were sold over the first half of the year, down 15.3 percent from last year. That number accounted for 22.24 percent of all own brand sedans were sold, down 5.41 percent from last year. Own brand sedans' combined market share of 20.91 percent in June was the lowest recorded since 2009.
When commenting on the issue, CAAM General Secretary Dong Yang remarked that he wasn't confident for own brands' performance in the latter half of the year. Many other analysts share those feelings, predicting that own brands will have a hard time recovering in the following months.
