At a recent Huawei internal conference, Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Division, was quoted as saying that worldwide shipments of Huawei smartphones will be around 230 million units or more this year, surpassing those of the Apple iPhone. If this information turns out to be correct, Huawei will become the second most popular smartphone brand in the world by 2019, just behind Samsung. Yu said: “We have surpassed the Apple iPhone.
In a similar announcement earlier this quarter, Huawei executives announced that global shipments of the company’s mobile phones have exceeded 200 million units. Based on the preliminary estimate of 230 million units, the growth rate of the brand’s global mobile phone shipments this year is now 12%.
iPhone deliveries for this year have not yet been announced, but based on Bank of America’s forecast that global iPhone deliveries will reach 202 million units in 2020, this year’s figures for the apple brand should not exceed this figure (they could even be less than 200 million units).
The data shows that iPhone shipments to China in November were down 35.4% year-on-year. This is probably due to the fierce competition currently facing Chinese smartphone manufacturers in their local markets, who also offer very good devices that are as good as their Apple or Samsung counterparts and offer good value for money.
Richard Yu said global shipments of Huawei’s Mate 30 series smartphones – the first U.S. chip-less smartphone to hit the market in 60 days – have already exceeded 7 million units, a 75% increase over last year. But much more remains to be done, as the delivery target for the Mate 30 series is 20 million units. However, due to the impact of this year’s sanctions imposed on Huawei by the Trump administration, overall sales of the brand’s smartphones are still affected to some extent, particularly in foreign markets.
Huawei has significantly increased its share of the premium smartphone market segment in recent years. But overtaking the iPhone is obviously not the ultimate goal of the Chinese giant, which must now try to get closer to the current leader in this market: Korean Samsung.
Canalys data shows that the third quarter of 2019 was the most productive quarter in terms of smartphone sales in the European market in history and that the significant increase in Samsung smartphone shipments was the driving force behind the performance observed in this market. Sales of Samsung smartphones in the region reached 18.7 million units, an increase of 26% over the previous year. In contrast, Huawei’s shipments to Western Europe were 17% lower than in the previous year.
At the same time, a recent report by the Korea Herald, based on data from Strategy Analytics, indicates that the Chinese giant will take second place among the world’s largest smartphone manufacturers this year, with around 250 million units shipped, with an estimated market share of 17.7% by year-end. Huawei is being overtaken by Samsung, which according to the same forecasts is expected to deliver 323 million units this year and hold 21.3% of the market share.
Source: Korea Herald, CnTechPost