For the first time in a lot of years, the worldwide smartphone market hasn’t registered a YoY decline in the third quarter of the year. In Q3 2019, the global shipment of smartphones reached 380 million as compared to 379.8 million in Q3 2018. Samsung, Huawei, and Apple were the top three brands to contribute to this number.
The growth, according to the report, is attributed to the strong demand in the Indian and the Chinese market in the month of Septemeber.
“In India, smartphone OEMs started preparing early for the festive Diwali season this year with healthy channel buildups. In China, Huawei, OPPO & vivo (HOV) continued to see healthy channel demand ahead of National Day Golden Week holiday break in October which led the market to grow a positive 6% sequentially.”, added, Shobhit Shrivastava, Research Analyst at Counterpoint Research.
Samsung led the quarter with a share of 21%, thanks to strong demand for its Galaxy Note and Galaxy A series. Huawei, despite the US Trade ban, grew a very healthy 28.5% globally YoY. But amongst all brands, it was realme that grew the fastest. The brand went from shipping 1.3 million devices in Q3 2018 to a whopping 10.2 million devices in Q3 2019. The report also states this growth to be “one of the fastest ramp-ups of companies to-date”. This also makes realme is the 7th largest smartphone company in the world now.
“The US trade ban on Huawei did not affect the overall brand’s shipments and growth in Q3 2019 after the uncertainties in June. Huawei’s strategy to supplement its decline in overseas market share with domestic push paid off handsomely. The rising sense of nationalism towards Huawei amidst US-China trade war coupled with aggressive go-to-market strategy in China helped Huawei boost mindshare and marketshare domestically. Outside China, the widening gap being created in overseas markets such as Europe, Latin America & Middle East due to the lack of shipping new models with Google services gives a window of opportunity especially Samsung, Xiaomi and others to capture share away.”, commented Tarun Pathak, Associate Director at Counterpoint Research.
Contrastingly, Apple’s shipments were down 4% in Q3 2019 YoY because of which revenues too fell down 11%. But the positive response for the iPhone 11 series means that Apple will generate strong revenues in Q4.
