What you need to know
- Huawei grew its market share in the second quarter to 38% overall to grab the top spot in China.
- Despite growing its market share, smartphone sales in China are down for the ninth consecutive quarter.
- The rest of the top five includes Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, and the only American company on the list Apple.
New data out of Canalys shows that Huawei dominated the second quarter of 2019, rising to be the most popular smartphone vendor in its home country of China.
The data shows that Huawei was able to reach a 38% market share, making it the highest for any vendor in the past eight years. This comes even as overall phone shipments fell in China for the ninth consecutive quarter to 97.6 million units for a 6% decline in shipments overall.
With Huawei taking the top spot growing its market share more than 10% in the second quarter amidst declining phone sales, that means especially bad news for the competition. After loses of up to 20%, the rest of the top five in order includes Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, and Apple.
Huawei's success can be attributed to a focus on the Chinese market, as its prospects looked dire after being placed on the U.S. Entity List. In some ways, this may have even helped Huawei grow its market share by pushing itself as the patriotic choice for Chinese consumers.
According to Kitty Fok from IDC,
The product itself is already well-recognized, and the trade war helped people feel like they need to support Huawei. The only worry was that they might not get the component supply, but in the end, they did.
Despite challenges it has faced this year with the risk of losing access to U.S. technologies, Huawei has prevailed and risen in popularity in the world's largest smartphone market. Its sales in China alone accounted for 64% of its overall smartphone shipments during the second quarter.
Considering Huawei makes some fantastic phones like the P30 Pro, that our very own Daniel Bader called his "favorite phone" recently, it should be no surprise Huawei continues to rise up in the market. It just goes to show that no matter what gets thrown at the Chinese tech giant, you just can't hold it back.
