Recently, Gartner Inc. released an interesting report concerning China’s technology giant Huawei. It turns out the latter continues to maintain its position as the world’s second-largest smartphone supplier and further narrows the gap with Samsung. The South Korean manufacturer has been in this place for a while. But now it feels Huawei’s breath on its neck. We are not talking about Apple, which has managed to drop a lot. And though it still ranks third, there are predictions that other China-based manufacturers can outrun it in the future.
Data shows that the market share of Samsung, the world’s top supplier, has dropped from 20.5% in the first quarter of this year to 19.2%. At the same time, the global shipment of smartphones has reached 71.62 million units. Huawei’s smartphone shipments have reached 58.4 million units in the same period, a year-on-year increase of 44.5%. This is also the highest growth among the world’s top five smartphone manufacturers. Its global market share increased from 10.5% in the same period last year to 15.7%. In addition, Huawei’s smartphone sales have grown in all regions, and the company has performed particularly well in the European market, with sales increasing by 69%.
Huawei’s growth is eye-catching if taking into account the global smartphone market has had a decline of 2.7% in the first quarter of 2019, totaling 373 million units.
Apple ranked third, with global shipments of 44.56 million units and a market share of 11.9%. OPPO is still ahead of Xiaomi. The former manufacturer has sold over 27.4 million units. But Xiaomi is expected to bypass OPPO soon. Xiaomi’s shipments reached 27.2 million units. This also means Xiaomi could exceed last year’s 100 million mark in 2019 as well.