Daily Management Review

Gartner: Chinese smartphones lead sales


12/05/2018


Worldwide sales of smartphones to end users in Q3 2018 increased by 1.4% compared with the same period in 2017 and amounted to 389 million units, Gartner research company reported. In many ways, the growth occurred thanks to Chinese brands.



Kārlis Dambrāns
Kārlis Dambrāns
According to experts, in July-September 2018, global smartphone sales  amounted to 389.1 million units against 383.6 million units a year earlier.

Chinese smartphone maker Huawei increased sales by 43% and moved into second place in the world in this indicator, beating Apple. The company's sales in July-September amounted to 52.2 million units against 45.7 million of Apple.

According to experts, there are three main criteria that buyers follow when purchasing new devices. Among them, the low cost of a smartphone, advanced camera features and high resolution display. This has led to a marked increase in sales of OPPO, Xiaomi and Huawei.

Xiaomi came in fourth place, overtaking competing OPPO and increasing market share from 7% to 8.5%; its sales amounted to 33.2 million units.

Director of Research at Gartner Anshul Gupta notes that, excluding performance of Huawei and Xiaomi, the market volume would have decreased by 5.2%.

“Thanks to low-cost smartphones, advanced camera functionality and high-resolution displays, leading Chinese mobile phone manufacturers increased sales in emerging markets in the third quarter,” the expert said.

Meanwhile, the undisputed market leader, South Korean Samsung, has reduced sales by 14%, to 73.36 million smartphones; the fall was a record in the entire history of Gartner’s reports. Its market share fell from 22.3% to 18.9%.

"The gap between Samsung and Huawei continues to shrink as Huawei expands rapidly by investing in brand and expansion in the emerging markets of the Middle East, Asia-Pacific and Africa. Huawei, for example, is actively promoting its low-cost Honor smartphones to help people in these markets move from simple push-button telephones to smartphones," said Anshul Gupta.

Apple showed a slight increase (by 0.7%) in smartphone sales in the third quarter of 2018 compared to the same period in 2017. The main problems of the company are related to saturation of demand for premium devices, increased competition in China and slow growth of the entire smartphone market.

Earlier, Counterpoint presented its report, according to which the top 10 global brands of smartphones currently account for 79% of the global market. Samsung continues to lead, securing a smartphone market share of 19%.

Gartner expects that with the advent of folding smartphones and smartphones with 5G support in 2020, another revival in the smartphone market will begin. According to company forecasts, in 2020 up to 65 million 5G smartphones will be sold. It is obvious that the introduction of 5G-networks will bring a considerable profit to the entire smartphone market.

source: gartner.com