The smartphone market has become pretty competitive ever since the past few years. With new players based out of China entering the race, smartphone goliaths like Samsung and Apple are struggling to hold on to their position in the market. These popular smartphone brands are now facing stiff competition from the likes of Xiaomi, OnePlus,…
The smartphone market has become pretty competitive ever since the past few years. With new players based out of China entering the race, smartphone goliaths like Samsung and Apple are struggling to hold on to their position in the market. These popular smartphone brands are now facing stiff competition from the likes of Xiaomi, OnePlus, Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and more. A recent report by reputed market research firm IDC claim that one of these Chinese brands, namely Huawei has, in fact, replaced Apple to gain the second spot in terms of market share for Q2 2018.
Unlike Oppo, Vivo or OnePlus; Huawei is one of those Chinese smartphone makers that has been in the business for quite some time now. It has, in fact, gone on to become the largest smartphone brand in China. Considering its recent global expansions, it was really a matter of time before it rose up the ladder in terms of international market share. Huawei was consistently ranking third in terms of smartphone shipments in every quarter ever since the last few years. Therefore, it isn’t really surprising to see the brand topple Apple from the second spot. Apple, themselves, had been suffering from pretty low sales, especially in China and India; so much so that it was even reported to be considering quitting both the countries.
As per the latest IDC report for Q2 2018, Huawei managed to sell 54.2 million smartphone units worldwide, as compared to 41.3 million sold by Apple. It’s for the first time, Huawei has crossed Apple to move on to the second spot based on the global market share. Samsung, on the other hand, remained the undeterred market leader with an overall shipment of 71.5 million units. Interestingly enough, Huawei managed to surpass Apple in the last quarter despite a declining overall market. The report reveals that a total of 342 million smartphones were shipped in the second quarter of this year, which represents a 1.8% decline as compared to the same quarter YoY.
To overcome Apple, Huawei banked heavily on it budget line of devices, with the maximum sales being driven by its sub-brand Honor. After having maintained a steady growth in the Q1 2018, all thanks to the positive market response towards it Huawei P20 and Huawei P20 Pro, the Chinese OEM succeeded in continuing the trend with its Honor 10. The rest of the device from Honor’s stable also fared pretty well. The IDC report claims that Huawei’s GPU Turbo technology fared pretty well in terms of marketing, as it helped the brand achieve the stupendous sales figure. Moreover, online channels fueled most of the sales for the brand in this quarter.
On the other hand, Samsung remained the market leader with over 20.9% market share despite a 10% decline in shipment YoY. The decline was mostly due to the benign response of consumers towards its Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ flagships. And there’s no doubt, in the fact, that these two flagship smartphones failed to recreate the hype developed by its predecessor when it was launched last year.
Just like Huawei, who recorded a 40.9% growth YoY, another Chinese OEM Xiaomi recorded impeccable growth during the course of the last quarter. With shipments of just under 32 million, Xiaomi succeeded in recording a growth of 48.8% in Q2 2018. Oppo also managed to grow, albeit at a markedly slower rate of 5.1% YoY in this quarter.
Despite, the lead having a decent lead in terms of smartphone shipments in Q2 2018, it would be interestingly to see if Huawei to manages to hang to the second spot. Apple is expected to bounce back strongly in the next quarter with the launch of its three next-generation iPhone models.
