Chinese mobile phone manufacturer, Huawei surpassed Samsung and Apple to become the world’s largest smartphone maker in April. According to Counterpoint Research’s monthly Market Pulse report, Huawei Second Largest Smartphone Brand in World, and captured 19 percent of the global smartphone market share while its rival Samsung share dipped to 17 percent.
Huawei doesn’t have access to Google services depriving its new mobile products of play store. The question is, despite this handicap, how did Huawei manage to top the charts? Maybe because of the COVID-19 pandemic. As China lifted the lockdown after supposedly containing the virus, domestic sales of Huawei saw an increase. While Samsung’s market share dropped from 20 percent to 17 percent in April, owing to the lockdowns in important markets of the company viz. the US, India, parts of Europe, and Latin America. Samsung had to shut down manufacturing in India.
Since the US ban on Huawei, sales in China increased due to the patriotic Chinese customer. In the last few quarters, Chinese customers started preferring Huawei more in comparison to other manufactures like OPPO, VIVO, and even Apple. Although local sales are increasing, global sales are declining due to no new products and no access to Google services. Legal issues the company stuck in are also far from over.
According to reports, Huawei is expecting its sales to drop by nearly 20 percent in 2020. In Europe, sales are down by 40 percent year-on-year. The global decline trend will continue due to the US trade ban and no GMS on its phones. Recently the US had cut Huawei access to the Global chip supplies making it hard for the company to compete with global mobile makers.
Huawei after the US Ban
Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, retired military personnel said to be close to the Chinese government and fears that the company can allow the Chinese government to use its equipment to spy on other companies and countries. Led to its ban in the US, the companies were said not to use Huawei of its products.
Later the company was added to the US entity list of the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security in May 2019, followed by an executive order issued by President Donald Trump banning Huawei from US communications networks.
After the events occurred, Huawei Second Largest Smartphone Brand and announced its profits increased by 5.6 percent in 2019, which is a significant slowdown from the company’s profit of 25 percent a year before.