Huawei beats Apple with global shipments to become world’s No 2 smartphone vendor in second quarter
Huawei’s strong performance is partly due to strong sales of its latest flagship model, the P20, and a stellar contribution from its budget brand Honor
China’s leading smartphone brand, Huawei Technologies, outstripped Apple in global smartphone shipments in the second quarter this year, putting it in second place behind Samsung Electronics and signalling the rising popularity of its handsets around the world.
Huawei became the world’s number two smartphone vendor, a long sought-after milestone for the company, after it shipped 54 million handsets, up 41 per cent year on year, Canalys said in a report on Wednesday.
Samsung remained the top vendor in the three-month period but felt the impact of Huawei and others by posting an 8 per cent decline to 73 million shipments, while Apple fell to third, shipping 41 million iPhones with tepid year-on-year growth of one per cent.
Huawei’s success follows its stated ambition to ship 200 million handsets to both domestic and global markets in 2018 after shipping 100 million phones as of July 18, the fastest pace of shipments the Chinese company has seen in years.
Huawei’s glittering second quarter performance is partly due to strong sales of its latest flagship model, the P20 series – which has outshone its P10 and P9 predecessors – and a stellar performance from its budget brand Honor. The mid-priced phone maker accounted for two thirds of the near 16 million jump in handset shipments by Huawei in the second quarter, helping the Chinese phone maker to beat Apple in overall sales, according to Canalys.
The second quarter is traditionally weak for Apple on a seasonal basis, said UK-based Canalys analyst Ben Stanton, estimating that the Cupertino, California-based technology giant shipped over 8 million iPhone Xs in the period, down from 14 million in the previous quarter.