The Strategist

Huawei outstrips Apple's smartphones sales in the world



09/07/2017 - 14:52



A new study by consulting firm Counterpoint's Market Pulse, held in July of this year, shows that Huawei has significantly outperformed Apple in terms of smartphone sales in June and July. The Chinese company can repeat the success in August. To date, Huawei is the world's second largest smartphone manufacturer, behind only Samsung.



Kārlis Dambrāns
Kārlis Dambrāns
According to Counterpoint's Market Pulse, Huawei managed to get ahead thanks to consistent investments in research and development, a wide scale of production combined with aggressive marketing and expansion of the sales channel. Nevertheless, Huawei’s weak presence in the markets of South Asia, India and North America is still limiting the company's potential in the medium term.

The consistent growth of Chinese brands has led to the fact that they occupy a leading position in the markets of China, Europe, Asia and Latin America, restraining growth of Samsung and Apple. Chinese brands are growing rapidly not only due to the design of smartphones, production capabilities and a rich set of functions, but also thanks to the superior competition strategy of entering the market and marketing. Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi have successfully gained access to key supply chain partners. This allowed them to launch products with full frameless displays, extended reality, embedded chipsets and advanced camera functions, reducing the backlog from Samsung and Apple.

Nevertheless, the most popular models of smartphones in July were devices from Apple. The list of top ten smartphones looks as follows:

1. iPhone 7 - 4% of the market

2. iPhone 7 plus - 2.9%

3. OPPO R11 - 2.1%

4. OPPO A57 - 2%

5. Samsung Galaxy S8 - 1.8%

6. Xiaomi Redmi Note 4x - 1.8%

7. Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus - 1.7%

8. iPhone 6 - 1.6%

9. Samsung Gala J7 Prime - 1.4%

10. Samsung Galaxy A5 - 1.2%

Huawei smartphones are not represented in the top ten. According a senior analyst at Counterpoint's Market Pulse, "Huawei needs to streamline its product range, as Oppo and Xiaomi have done, adding more capacity with fewer products." Researchers at Counterpoint's Market Pulse also note that with the release of new models from Apple, Huawei's position may worsen and the company may lose second place in smartphone sales in the world.

source: counterpointresearch.com