Global smartphone sales fell 20% in Q2 2020, COVID-19 to blame

What you need to know

• The latest data from Garnet claims global smartphone sales declined by 20.4% in Q2 2020 due to COVID-19.
• Samsung was the worst-affected smartphone vendor, registering a 27.1% decline in sales compared to the same period a year earlier.
• Huawei's sales, on the other hand, grew 27.4% over the last quarter, allowing it to tie with Samsung for the No.1 spot.

Global smartphone sales declined 20.4% YoY in the second quarter of the year, according to new data from Gartner. While over 370 million smartphones were sold in the second quarter of 2019, worldwide sales of smartphones totaled 295 million units in Q2 2020. Unsurprisingly, the research firm attributes the sharp decline to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Samsung witnessed the biggest decline in sales among the top five smartphone vendors, while Apple was the least affected. Samsung, which sold over 75 million phones in Q2 2019, could only sell roughly 55 million phones in the April-June period this year. Apple's sales, on the other hand, remained largely unchanged, with a 0.4% YoY decline.

Huawei's smartphone sales dropped 6.8% compared to the same period last year, but grew 27.4% over the previous quarter. As a result, it captured a market share of 18.4% during the quarter, marginally lower than Samsung's 18.6%. What helped Huawei improve its performance over the previous quarter was its massive lead in China. In the second quarter, Huawei was successful in capturing a 42.6% share of China's smartphone market.

Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner, said in a statement:

Among the top five smartphone markets, India is said to have recorded the worst decline, with smartphone sales dropping by a whopping 46% YoY. China, on the other hand, saw a massive increase in demand over the last quarter, although sales were still down 7% compared to Q2 2019.