Xiaomi has outpaced Apple to become the 3rd best smartphone brand globally according to a new report. Gartner stated that among the top five smartphone manufacturers, Samsung was at the top position with 22% market share along with Huawei with 14.1% market share. Xiaomi moved ahead of iPhone into the 3rd position for the first time with sales of 44.4 million units in comparison to Apple’s sales of 40.5 million units in the third quarter of 2020.
Global smartphone sales to end-users had a total of 366 million units in Q3 2020 down to 5.7% from Q3 2019. Overall global mobile phone sales to end users were a total of 401 million units which is a decline of 8.7% year-over-year.
Anshul Gupta, the Senior Research Director at Gartner said that consumers are limiting their discretionary spend even though lockdown conditions have started to improve. Global smartphone sales experienced moderate growth from Q2 2020 to Q3 2020. This was because of pent-up demand from previous quarters.
After two consecutive quarters of a decline of 20%, quarterly smartphone sales have started to show signs of recovery in a sequential manner. Still, smartphone sales continued to remain weaker in comparison to the same time period in 2019, even with vendors who introduced multiple 5G smartphones and governments relaxing shelter-in-place instructions in some geographies.
Gupta also added that early signs of recovery can be seen in some markets which includes parts of mature Asia/Pacific and Latin America. Almost normal conditions in China improved smartphone production to fill the supply gap in the third quarter which benefited sales to some extent. This year, for the first time, smartphone sales to end users in three of the top five markets i.e., India, Indonesia and Brazil increased, growing 9.3%, 8.5% and 3.3%.
Samsung and Xiaomi were the only vendors at the top five to experience growth in Q3 2020. Samsung benefited from its strong positioning among Android users and recorded a sale of 80.8 million units. Xiaomi grew 34.9% and securing 12.1% market share and moving past Apple to third position. Xiaomi gained from the loss of Huawei which also includes strong performance in China.
Annette Zimmermann, who is the Research Vice President at Gartner said that Apple sold 40.5 million units in Q3 and a decline of 0.6% in comparison to 2019. He also added that the small decrease was because of Apple’s delayed shipment start of its new 2020 iPhone generation, which in previous years normally started at mid/end September. This year, the launch event and shipment started 4 weeks later than usual.
Economic uncertainties and continued fear of the next wave of Covid-19 continue to put pressure on nonessential spending through the end of 2020. The delay in 5G network upgrades has also limited the opportunity for smartphone vendors.