Huawei started 2019 full of promise and but how it ended 2019 was pretty much the opposite, in spite of what the company spokespeople would like you to believe. Early in 2019, Huawei confidently declared that it will overtake Samsung as the number one smartphone manufacturer worldwide by the end of the year. Of course, no one could’ve guessed what was to come and unfortunately for Huawei it was an utter shitstorm.
Trump’s trade ban hit the company hard and the numbers don’t lie. The Chinese company really were on track to topple Samsung as the #1 in the world. A combination of dwindling sales from Samsung’s side and a strong line up of releases from Huawei put the company is pole position to overtake Samsung.
Fast forward to today and with the release of Strategy Analytics new fourth-quarter report, it’s hard to give any real credibility to claims that the trade ban didn’t effect Huawei that badly.
“Huawei shipped 56.0 million smartphones worldwide in Q4 2019, sliding 7 percent annually from 60.5 million in Q4 2018. Huawei’s global marketshare has dipped from 16 percent to 15 percent in the past year. Despite strong 5G sales, Huawei is slowing at home in China and facing tougher competition abroad in key markets like Europe.”
Woody Oh, Director at Strategy Analytics
That strong momentum that the company had going into 2019 has since dissipated and it’s recent announcement that it won’t be returning to Google services even if the trade ban is lifted just seems like a poker player sticking to his bluff. Best case scenario, Huawei’s gamble pays off and Harmony OS becomes a legitimate third ecosystem but let’s be realistic here, the odds of that are slim.
Regardless of Huawei’s drop in performance in the last quarter, the company still finished above Apple to secure the #2 spot. In spite of losing out to Huawei, Apple finished the year as the top selling smartphone brand thanks to the iPhone 11 blew away its competition. Apple beat out Samsung and Huawei in terms of units sold and market share for Q4, which could signal a resurgence for the Cupertino based company.
The most surprising thing here is Samsung, who we all expected to record a significant drop in numbers but ended up only dipping 1% annually from 69.6 million in Q4 2018 to 68.8 in Q4 2019. The Korean company’s global marketshare actually stayed unchanged at 18% as the company continues to experience a mini revival with good performance across all price points from entry level to flagship models. Samsung maintained its #1 spot with a 21 percent marketshare in 2019.
