Chinese mobile phone manufacturer Huawei is rapidly building marketshare in the global smartphone market selling 34 million handsets in the first quarter of this year as it closes in on Apple, while market leader Samsung sees its marketshare continuously declining.
Huawei is slowly but surely narrowing the gap in sales with Apple, as it leads fellow companies Oppo and Vivo in growing their combined global market, according to the latest report from analyst firm Gartner.
Gartner says Huawei “edged closer” to Apple with its smartphone sales in the quarter, but Apple was still able to sell 52 million smartphones over the three months.
And while Samsung still leads the market with sales of 79 million for the quarter, sales declined 3.1% over the three months.
{loadposition peter}"Although Samsung announced that preorders for the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus are up 30% year over year, the absence of an alternative to Note 7 and the fierce competition in the basic smartphone segment are leading Samsung to continuously lose market share," says Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner.
"Sales of iPhones were flat, which led to a drop in market share year over year. Similar to Samsung, Apple is increasingly facing fierce competition from Chinese brands Oppo and Vivo, among others, and its performance in China is under attack."
For the total smartphone market, worldwide sales of smartphones to end users totaled 380 million units in the first quarter, a 9.1% increase over the first quarter of 2016, according to Gartner.
The analysts firm says global sales are being driven by mobile phone buyers spending more to get a better phone, and resulting in a rise in average selling prices.
The latest report from Gartner shows the three Chinese smartphone manufacturers – Huawei, Oppo and Viva - increasing their combined share of the global smartphone market by 7% in the quarter to give them a 24% share of the total market.
Of the three Chinese companies, Oppo trailed Huawei with 31 million sales in the quarter while Vivo did sales of 25 million for the three months.
But, Oppo is continuing to catch up with Huawei, with Gartner showing the company with a 94.6% increase in worldwide smartphone sales in the first quarter, achieving the best performance of the quarter and retaining the No. 1 position in China.
"Oppo continued to rally sales through a large network of brick-and-mortar retailers, beating market incumbents such as Samsung and Huawei," said Gupta, noting that Oppo's strategy — centred on the camera, fast charging and offline retail — has helped it grow smartphone sales in the international market.
Meanwhile, Vivo sold almost 26 million smartphones and achieved a market share of 6.8%, which Gupta says helped it achieve growth of 84.6% in the first quarter.
"Vivo saw growing demand of its smartphones from the emerging markets in Asia/Pacific, including India, where sales grew over 220% thanks to its increased brand appeal and high-quality smartphones."
