Huawei has overtaken Apple in smartphone sales, becoming the second largest manufacturer in the world after Samsung, according to 2019 estimates from some of the largest analytics companies in the market. The result confirms the successes of the Chinese company, despite the difficulties encountered last year due to its banning by the United States, which accuses Huawei of spying on behalf of the Chinese government, so far without concrete and convincing evidence.
According to analysts Canalys, Strategy Analytics and Counterpoint Research, Huawei has sold around 40 million more smartphones than Apple, while still stopping at nearly 60 million from the Korean company Samsung, which maintains the top spot.
Huawei smartphones sold in 2019 were 240.6 million, almost 15 percent more than the previous year. Apple sold 198 million of its iPhones, while Samsung sold 298 million smartphones. In fourth place in the ranking is Xiaomi, another Chinese company that is establishing itself on the market with its quality products, but at very competitive prices: it has sold 125 million smartphones. In fifth place is another Chinese company, Oppo, with 120 million smartphones sold.
Following allegations of spying by the United States, last year Huawei received sanctions and limitations, which also affected its contracts with Alphabet, the large US holding that controls Google. The Chinese company was effectively prohibited from using the version of the Android operating system that includes Google services and applications, thus significantly limiting the functionality of its smartphones. Following the limitations, many analysts had predicted a sharp decline in sales for Huawei, but things turned out differently: the company was able to sell the smartphones it still had in stock with Android and Google services and, in the meantime, provide a version of the operating system with alternative functions to circumvent the ban.
The news and suspicions about Huawei have however affected international sales, while they have not had particular repercussions for those in China, where the company already offered Android without Google services (limited for reasons of censorship by the Chinese government). According to analysts, 60 percent of 2019 Huawei smartphone sales took place in China. Overseas sales growth was 17 percent, but slowed in the last quarter as limitations for Android became apparent.
Canalys points out that, without the problems with the United States, Huawei probably could have sold many more smartphones and came to undermine Samsung's top spot. The difference of almost 60 million smartphones is however substantial and according to other analysts it seems unlikely that Huawei could seriously aspire to the first place.
It is not the first time that Huawei has overtaken Apple, even if the previous one lasted only a few months: it had happened between June and July of 2017 and, again, in the second quarter of 2018. The new data indicates instead that Huawei has overtaken Apple for everything. 2019.
As the last quarterly cash report referring to last year shows, Apple has nevertheless achieved excellent results, above all thanks to the success of the new iPhone 11, presented last September. The company sold between 7 and 11 percent more iPhones than it did in the last quarter of 2018. In the last three months of 2019, things went so well for Apple that it was able to surpass Samsung's sales, which however include countless models compared to Apple's relatively limited offering.
Samsung usually sells more devices in the early months of the new year, coinciding with the release of its most premium Galaxy models. Next month, the South Korean company will unveil the highly anticipated and highly anticipated new Galaxy S20 for which strong sales are expected. Apple is also expected to present a new model, less expensive than those presented last year, to replace the iPhone SE.
Perhaps the most relevant data is, however, that in 2019 all manufacturers still sold fewer smartphones than in 2018. According to analysts, it is the second consecutive year of lower growth in the sector, which is dealing with a certain saturation of the market and a change of habits by their customers. While the replacement cycle of a smartphone used to be between one and a half and two years, now most people use the same mobile phone for many more years, without feeling the need to upgrade to newer models, which rarely offer such functionality. different.
Manufacturers are confident of relaunching sales this year to coincide with the opening of the first 5G cellular networks, which will allow them to browse and exchange data much faster. However, other factors could affect sales and the outlook is uncertain. On the one hand, there is the so-called “trade war” between the United States and China, which affects exports, and on the other, concerns about the new coronavirus that could reduce the production capacity of the Chinese plants where most smartphones are produced. that we have in our pockets.
