Huawei has sold the most phones than any other brand so far in 2020. Singapore based research firm Canalys reported Huawei to have shipped 55.8 million phones in April-June 2020. On the other hand, Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi, and Oppo secured remaining positions in the descending order shipping 53.7, 40-45, 28.8, and 25.8 million phones respectively. Huawei has managed to ship 40 million out of 55.8 million phones in China alone.
For Huawei, 55.8 million is 5% lesser sales in comparison to the sales number in Q2 2020. Samsung, however, has faced a huge 30% fallback owing to the degrading demand in the likes of Brazil, the United States, and Europe. But the company looks forward to a rise in demand in the latter part of 2020.
Ben Stanton, Senior Analyst at Canalys stated, “This is a remarkable result that few people would have predicted a year ago. If it wasn’t for COVID-19, it wouldn’t have happened. Huawei has taken full advantage of the Chinese economic recovery to reignite its smartphone business. Samsung has a very small presence in China, with less than 1% market share, and has seen its core markets, such as Brazil, India, the United States, and Europe, ravaged by outbreaks and subsequent lockdown.”
Huawei has surged to dominate the domestic market with an 8% rise in shipment despite a 27% fall in overseas shipment, meaning they sell above 70% smartphones in mainland China.
Mo Jia, a Paris-based analyst for Canalys said, “China returning to normal life before [countries in the west] definitely contributed to the situation. But Huawei’s also managed to prevent its European sales numbers from free-falling as many had predicted after they were placed on the entity list.” He added, “The European market number had dipped from 22% in Q2 2019 to 16% in Q2 2020. Yet the fallback is minimal keeping the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as well as Google scenario into consideration.”
In Europe, Huawei has been re-releasing the older models including the likes of P30 that still runs the Google core services. Mo said, “Huawei is essentially changing the shell by changing colors or build material of existing phone and re-releasing in Europe, which is selling.” Of course, a Google reliant smartphone consumer would not prefer a device that misses out on the service in the first place. He further added, “But there are other parts of Europe such as Russia and Turkey, which are not so reliant on Google services, and Huawei sales have remained strong in those regions. Huawei will need to popularize HMS in the long run to ensure continued sales in western Europe.”
