Smartphone sales to end-users totaled 366 million units in Q3, down 5.7 percent from the third quarter of 2019, according to Gartner. Overall global mobile phone sales totaled 401 million units, a decline of 8.7 percent year-over-year. After two consecutive quarters of a decline of 20 percent, quarterly smartphone sales started to show signs of recovery sequentially. However, smartphone sales continued weaker compared to the same period in 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 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 upgrades also limited the opportunity for smartphone vendors.
Aside from Samsung and Xiaomi, all the other vendors saw declining sales, with Huawei falling the most, at 21.3 percent.
Among the top five smartphone manufacturers, Samsung held the first position with 22 percent market share and recorded sales of 80.8 million units, rising 2 percent above the year ago period. Samsung benefited from its strong positioning among Android users, the researchers noted.
Xiaomi moved ahead and bumped Apple to the third spot in the top 5 vendors classification for the first time ever with sales of 44.4 million units and a 12.1 percent market share. That compares to Apple’s sales of 40.6 million units and a 11.1 percent market share in Q3. Apple's number of shipped units declined 0.6 percent versus 2019. Xiaomi grew 34.9 percent in the third quarter as it gained from Huawei’s loss, including strong performance in China.
Despite a steep decline in the number of its shipped units, Huawei was second with 51.83 million units and a market share of 14.1 percent.
Oppo was fifth in the classification with 29.89 million units and a market share of 8.2 percent, a decline of 2.3 percent year-on-year.
The other vendors' combined market share was 32.5 percent, down 14.7 percent.
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