China’s factories shipment of smartphones to vendors increased by 17% in April compared to this same month in 2019 based on the government data that was released today, Tuesday. The number showed an early domestic rebound for smartphone makers such as Apple, Huawei and a potential return to normalcy in China for the broader consumer hardware market right after the coronavirus outbreak in the country.

Some 40.8 million phones were shipped in April alone compared to the 34.8Million units of shipment made back in April 2019 according to reports gotten by Reuters from China Academy of Information and Communication Technology (CAICT) which is a state-backed body.

This will be the first time in many years that the organization will be revealing the number of Android devices shipped which is a metric that gave insight into how many smartphones Apple has sold in China each month.

Private research firms tracking the smartphone sector such as Canalys, IDC and Counterpoint Research all reported that in the first quarter shipments of Apple devices in China declined in the low single digits.

Huawei, which is Apple’s biggest rival in the country on the other hand relatively had a plateaued shipments in the quarter while other big Android phone makers like, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi all had a brunt of the coronavirus which caused a decrease in the volume of shipments made by double-digit percentages according to the research groups.

Apple and its rival smartphone brands do not publicly release regional shipments.