MWC 2019 winners? Chinese phone brands. Here’s what they revealed
- Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, ZTE and Nubia all had a great showing at the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona
- Huawei’s foldable Mate X was the star, but the Xiaomi Mi 9, Oppo’s new camera system and Nubia’s phone-on-a-wrist also grabbed attention
Apple and Samsung may still be the most well-known smartphone brands in the world, but Chinese names such as Huawei are increasingly making their mark on the international mobile landscape.
OnePlus, for instance, is popular among Android enthusiasts in the West, and US YouTube tech influencer Marques Brownlee even named the brand’s 6T model the smartphone of the year in 2018. Xiaomi, meanwhile, continues its expansion into Europe and in January opened its biggest Mi Store in the world on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, France.
Huawei overtook Apple in total handsets sold in 2018 and both Apple and Samsung suffered declining sales in China and Southeast Asia over the same period.
Apple CEO Tim Cook singled out slow iPhone sales in China as the reason for Apple’s less-than-stellar recent quarterly results. Meanwhile, Samsung’s market share in China has sunk below 1 per cent, according to reports in South Korea.
This year’s Mobile World Congress, held in Barcelona between February 25 and 28, offered a microcosm of this shifting power dynamic.
Previously a trade show dominated by Samsung, and to a lesser extent its fellow South Korean electronics brand LG, the star of this year’s edition was easily Huawei, whose foldable 5G phone, the Mate X, generated massive buzz.