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Huawei overtakes Apple as the second-largest smartphone seller

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Huawei has taken Apple’s spot as the world’s second top-selling smartphone manufacturer, according to Gartner. The report notes that Huawei sold 49.8 million units in the second quarter of 2018, taking 13.3 percent of the smartphone market share and beating out Apple’s 44.7 million units. The report confirms another report from Counterpoint research.

That 13.3 percent market share is up from the 9.8 percent market share that Huawei had in the second quarter of 2017, and Apple’s 11.9 percent market share is down from the 12.1 percent market share from last year — even if only slightly down.

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Of course, it’s likely Apple will regain its spot in the third quarter, especially considering the fact that the company is expected to release as many as three iPhones in September. Still, that doesn’t take away from the fact that Apple is facing increased competition from Chinese manufacturers like Huawei, which is forcing Apple to rethink the iPhone and deliver new features in an effort to convince existing customers to upgrade to new models, and others to think about switching to the iPhone. According to Gartner, demand for the iPhone X, Apple’s flagship iPhone, has slowed down much earlier than previous new iPhone models.

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After Samsung, Huawei, and Apple, the likes of Xiaomi and Oppo take the fourth and fifth spots, respectively, further highlighting the competition that Apple and Samsung face from Chinese smartphone brands. Xiaomi, in particular, made notable growth. While the company sold around 21 million units in the second quarter of 2017, in 2018’s second quarter, it managed to increase that to almost 33 million units, snapping up 8.8 percent of the smartphone sales market share in the process.

It’s no surprise that Samsung held on to the top spot, but its sales did slow a little. While the company held 19.3 percent of the market share, that is down quite a bit from the 22.6 percent of the market share that it had in the second quarter of 2017.

Gartner also reported on the smartphone operating system market share. According to the report, Android extended its lead over iOS with 88 percent of the smartphone market share, up from 87.8 percent in the second quarter of 2017. iOS held 11.9 percent, while everything else went down from 0.1 percent to 0.0 percent, reflecting the dominance of the big two operating systems.

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Christian de Looper
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