Amid a 0.4 percent contraction in the global smartphone market in Q3 compared to the corresponding quarter last year, Huawei continued to stride ahead with 26 percent growth. It has narrowed the gap with Samsung at the top while pulling away from Apple in third spot.
Despite the challenges of US sanctions, Huawei has steamrolled ahead and narrowed the gap with Samsung for global smartphone supremacy in Q3.
Samsung, China Mobile and Alibaba have made it to the top 10 of Forbes 2019 top 100 digital companies. The Korea giant came in third behind Apple and Microsoft, but edged out Google and Intel.
The signs are not good for smartphone sales as Gartner reports a 1.7 percent decline in Q2. Bucking the trend among the top five markets are China and Brazil. China clocked up 101 million smartphone sales, up 0.5 percent year on year in Q2, to maintain its top position.
By Edward Lim
When it was first introduced in 2011, the Samsung Galaxy Note received brickbats for its 5.3-inch screen size with critics wondering if this was a wrong move for the Korean smartphone maker. History has proven that Samsung had made the right bet as others followed suit with larger screen sizes as well.
While its competitors struggled, Huawei strode ahead and emerged the winner in the worldwide smartphone market in Q1. Though it’s still behind market leader Samsung, the China-based smartphone giant narrowed the gap with an astounding 50 percent growth in the quarter, according to IDC.
Worldwide shipment of wearable devices will touch 225 million in 2019, an increase of 25.8 percent from 2018, according to Gartner.
Televisions have come a long way since the days when one can be kept for decades and handed down to the next generation. The goggleboxes of old were also centre pieces that were much to be admired and where families and even communities gathered.
Smartphone vendors shipped 355.2 million units in Q3, down six percent from the corresponding quarter last year, according to preliminary estimates by IDC. This is the fourth straight quarter of year-on-year decline.
Spotify has joined hands with Samsung to give users a seamless listening experience across Samsung devices.
Xiaomi and Samsung shipped 9.9 million smartphones each to India in Q2. Together they account for 60 percent of the total shipment that quarter, according to Canalys.
Taiwan smartphone maker HTC is making a cut of the most painful kind — by slicing 20 percent of its workforce. The decision to swallow the bitter pill comes in the wake of heavy losses and strong competition.
The worldwide wearables market is adjusting as smartwatches continue to come to the forefront. In the coming years, smartwatches will encompass more features and functionalities.
Twenty-two days. It took relatively unknown smartphone maker OnePlus just that amount of time to sell one million units of OnePlus 6, its latest smartphone.
China smartphone makers Huawei and Xiaomi grew strongest as the market recovered in Q1, according to Gartner.
The India smartphone market shipped 30 million units in Q1, the strongest Q1 performance ever and an 11-percent growth year on year, according to IDC.
In a quarter when the China smartphone market experienced it biggest ever decline, Xiaomi bucked the trend and grew 37 percent to 12 million units, according to Canalys.
Building on a momentum of 155 percent annual shipment growth in India last year, Xiaomi started Q1 at the top with a whopping nine million plus units to snag 31 percent market share, according to Canalys.
India has become the fastest growing smartphone market in the world with total shipment growing 14 percent to 124 million units in 2017, according to IDC.
Cryptocurrency mining has been given a boost with the revelation that Samsung is working on chip just for that purpose.
Amid rumours that Apple was going to axe the iPhone X came encouraging sales numbers by Canalys.
New Android mobile phone launches spurred growth in Australia, leading to year-on-year growth of 18.4 percent to 2.16 million units, exceeding expectations in Q2, according to IDC.
Smartphones accounted for nearly all of the shipped phones — totalling 2.06 million.
Android returned to being the most popular smartphone OS in Australia. Recently, iOS had overtaken Android as the most popular smartphone OS in Q4 2016 as it held over 54 percent of the market compared to 47 percent for Android.
China-based vendors strengthened their grip in the India smartphone market, snaring 51.4 percent share of the smartphone shipment in Q1, according to IDC. They grew 16.9 percent sequentially and an impressive 142.6 percent over the same period last year.
In contrast, share of homegrown vendors dropped to 13.5 percent in the Q1 from 40.5 percent in the same quarter last year.
Overall, 27 million smartphones were shipped in Q1, a 14.8 percent growth over the same period last year. Unlike last year, shipment grew sequentially in the first quarter of 2017 by 4.7 percent recovering from demonetisation impact in Q4.
Everybody knows China is big but with nearly half a billion smartphones shipped last year, the market is massive — that’s one smartphone for every three person in the world’s most populous country.
According to Canalys estimates, China reached 476.5 million unit shipment, growing year on year at 11.4 percent, far exceeding the annual growth rate of 1.9 percent in 2015. China shipment reached 131.6 million units in Q4, which is the highest single quarter total in history, accounting for nearly a third of worldwide shipment.
Huawei took the top spot in the market with 76.2 million shipment, a small lead ahead of runner-up Oppo with 73.2 million units, followed by Vivo in third place at 63.2 million units.
While Samsung remained at the top, China smartphone makers occupied four of the top five positions to snare the lion’s share in India in Q4, according to Canalys.
Their extremely price-competitive devices pushed out India makers, who have been hit hard by the Indian government’s decision to demonetise the INR500 and INR1,000 (US$7.30 and US$14.65) banknotes.
“Local brands’ target customers typically buy in cash and from independent retailers. With the short-term liquidity crunch caused by demonetisation, these retailers are suffering a slowdown in consumer spending. Local vendors are losing out as retailers look to shift their stock to fast-moving, current devices. In Q4 2015, Micromax, Intex and Lava took second, third and fifth place, accounting for almost 30 percent of the market. One year on and all three vendors have dropped out of the top five, with their collective share falling to around 11 percent,” said Rushabh Doshi, Analyst of Canalys.
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