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Smartphone sales to end users totaled 366 million units in the third quarter, down 5.7 percent from the third quarter of 2019, according to Gartner. Global mobile phone sales totaled 401 million units, a decrease of 8.7 percent year on year. After two consecutive quarters of a 20 percent decline, quarterly smartphone sales began to show signs of recovery sequentially. However, smartphone sales continued weaker compared to the same period in 2019, even with vendors introducing multiple 5G smartphones and governments relaxing shelter-in-place instructions in some geographies.
Global smartphone sales experienced moderate growth from the second quarter of 2020 to the third quarter due to pent-up demand from the previous quarters, the researchers noted.
Economic uncertainties and continued fear of the next wave of the pandemic are expected to continue to put pressure on non-essential spending through the end of 2020. The delay in 5G network updates also limited the opportunity for smartphone providers.
Samsung still ahead of the group, Xiaomi gets stronger
Aside from Samsung and Xiaomi, all other vendors experienced a drop in sales, with Huawei falling the most, at 21.3 percent.
Among the top five smartphone makers, Samsung ranked first with a 22 percent market share and posted sales of 80.8 million units, up 2 percent from the same period a year earlier. Samsung benefited from its strong positioning among Android users, the researchers noted.
Xiaomi moved up and took Apple to third place in the ranking of the top 5 vendors for the first time with sales of 44.4 million units and a market share of 12.1 percent. That compares with Apple’s sales of 40.6 million units and a market share of 11.1 percent in the third quarter. The number of units shipped from Apple declined 0.6 percent compared to 2019. Xiaomi grew 34.9 percent in the third quarter as it benefited from Huawei’s loss, including a strong performance in China.
Despite a sharp decline in the number of its units shipped, Huawei ranked second with 51.83 million units and a 14.1 percent market share.
Oppo came in fifth in the rankings with 29.89 million units and a market share of 8.2 percent, a decrease of 2.3 percent year-on-year.
The combined market share of the other providers was 32.5 percent, down 14.7 percent.
