Breaking: Huawei smartphone regains shipment growth

It’s good news, after a long time, Huawei has once again reclaimed growth in China’s smartphone market despite facing having no 5G in its new smartphones. According to the data compiled by Counterpoint research, Huawei has achieved 15% of year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter of 2022 as compared to the same quarter in 2021.

The company had 7 percent of the overall smartphone market share in Q4 2021, which recorded 9.5% in Q4 2022. This is a major difference. We could assume that the latest progress is made with the release of the Huawei Mate 50 series in October. Thereafter, Huawei customers supported the sales volume to a new milestone.

“Huawei recovered from its low base in 2021, increasing by 15% YoY in Q4. However, the brand is still unable to ship 5G-enabled devices, which is a major concern for its sales outlook.” wrote Counterpoint.

In 2023:

This year, Huawei is planning to launch a number of new smartphones and it’ll return to the dual flagship unveiling tradition. This means we would see the P series and Mate series launching in a single year.

The launches could further help Huawei to increase its growth in share among Chinese consumers to rank better in Q2 2023 smartphone market results.

Q4 2022:

In Q4 2022, Apple gained captured 23.7% of the market, maintaining its leading position. But it registered a double-digit YoY decline like major Android OEMs.

All the major OEMs offered stronger promotions during the Singles’ Day online sales festival. They also used the sales promotion season to shed excess inventory. Smartphone sales surged MoM, but the rise didn’t sustain into December when COVID-19 started spreading fast.

Coming to overall sales, China’s smartphone sales declined 14% year over year in 2022, which is counted as the slowest smartphone growth in the last decade. It’s also the fifth year that China recorded continued to decline.

In Q4 2022, China’s smartphone market declined by 15%, and a similar result has been seen throughout the past three quarters.