BEIJING -- Shipments of 5G phones in China rose 6 percent year-on-year to about 17.74 million units in May this year, data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) showed.

The volume accounted for 85.3 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 the first five months of the year, China's mobile phone shipments dropped 27.1 percent year-on-year to 108 million units, of which 79.7 percent were 5G phones.

China shipped 106 million smartphones in the January-May period, accounting for 98.2 percent of its total mobile phone shipments in the first five months.

During the same period, domestic brands also took the lion's share of the Chinese mobile phone market, which contributed to 83.8 percent of the total domestic mobile phone shipments.