Xiaomi tops the global smartphone market, Huawei slipped to fourth

For a long time, Huawei has been ruling the smartphone market across the globe. But in 2019, the U.S. government on basis of false national security allegations added the company to the entity-list. This results in the Chinese tech giant facing a lot of difficulties from component purchasing to product manufacturing.

In the meantime, other phone-making companies taken benefit of this situation and working hard to surpass Huawei. According to the latest report, Xiaomi reported as its most profitable year to date on the basis of expanded sales and share in the global market, majorly in European countries.

Fiona Vanier, senior analyst for forecasting at CCS Insight believes that Huawei dropped from second to fourth rank in terms of smartphone selling and Xiaomi’s market share grow rapidly outside the Mainland market. Xiaomi has definitely gained the advantage of Huawei’s difficulties and became successful to acquire the international market share.

“When Huawei was added to the US Entity List in mid-2019, it was the [world’s] second-biggest smartphone maker by volume, By the final quarter of 2020, it had slipped to fourth place and we expect its global market share to keep declining” Fiona Vanier, senior analyst for forecasting at CCS Insight commented

According to the previous report, the market research agency publish a report and reveals, Xiaomi’s share of the global smartphone market increase 11.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020 with total shipments of 43.3 million units. The company rises up to third place after Apple and Samsung Electronics in the global market.

However, the previous Counterpoint report confirms that Huawei remained China’s top smartphone seller in the fourth quarter with a 37% shareholdings, Xiaomi still outperformed the market. Moreover, Huawei faces a decline of 26%, while Xiaomi registered a growth of 15% and occupies the fifth rank with 12% of market share after Vivo, Oppo, and Apple.

According to the Counterpoint research report, there are two more reasons except for the US sanctions, which helps Xiaomi to rise:

• Xiaomi’s Redmi smartphones sales increase from the second half of last year due to the weakened performance of Huawei budget brand Honor, which was sold in November 2020.
• Although, Xiaomi accounted for total revenue of US$10.8 billion in the fourth quarter in the overseas market. Even so, Huawei is still making it tough for the other smartphone vendors to cross over it.

Apart from this, Huawei is still a top company in the Chinese market and overcoming its difficulties by finding alternative solutions of OS and apps such as HarmonyOS and HMS (Huawei Mobile services).

To be mentioned, according to a recent report, more than 300 application partners joined the Huawei HarmonyOS app ecosystem. At the same time, Chinese smartphone maker Meizu could also use the HMS on its devices.

(Source)