For many years, Samsung has taken the crown of the top smartphone manufacturer in the world. Samsung still sells millions of smartphones every year but it has been facing stiff competition from a number of manufacturers out of China. These include Huawei, OPPO, Xiaomi, vivo and others. These manufacturers tend to offer slightly affordable devices compared to what Samsung offers.
Affordability is key in most emerging and developing economies where not many people are willing to spend flagship money on a single device. This is where the Chinese manufacturers shine.
Huawei has been clear that they wanted to be the top smartphone manufacturer at some point. The company announced this back in 2016 and looking at what it has been doing since then, it is clear that they were going for the top spot no matter what.
When Huawei announced its plans in 2016, Apple and Samsung were ahead and those were the two companies it was focused on beating. Huawei did overtake Apple back in 2018 and said that it had plans to overtake Samsung by 2020.
Not So Easy
Huawei had clear plans but when the United States trade ban kicked in, it wasn’t clear if its goal was still on the table. The trade ban affected Huawei directly as the company wasn’t allowed to work with Google and this meant that its Android devices were not on the same level as other Android devices on the market. This was the case on the software level but Huawei has been clear that the experience users get has not changed that much since the ban.
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With the ban, Huawei slowed down the roll out of some of its devices and some people were not willing to risk it and get its smartphones. This slowed down its growth in most markets including Kenya but it looks like the company did not suffer that much.
21.4% Market Share
According to Counterpoint Research, Huawei saw its smartphone market share reach 21.4% in April. By now you probably know about the current pandemic which we are in and this might have been beneficial to Huawei. Most international markets have seen low demand for almost all products including smartphones. Huawei at the same time has seen very positive numbers in its home country of China as most other markets where Samsung has a presence have seen very low numbers.
Strict lockdowns have meant that Samsung was not able to sell as much as it anticipated and in April it accounted for 19.1% market share. This is quite a drop from March when its market share stood at 29%.
According to Counterpoint Research, Samsung saw weak demand for the Galaxy S20 series compared to its predecessor. This was expected as I have pointed above, the pandemic is forcing people to spend less on smartphones for a number of reasons.
Weak Overall demand
Overall, April saw weak smartphone demand globally according to the research firm. Compared to last year, manufacturers saw a huge decrease of 41% with only 69.37 million smartphones shipped.
China is seeing demand improve right now but the case is not the same for most other international markets. This means that Huawei may end up having a good year compared to some of its rivals.
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