Global smartphone shipments down 6% in Q3 as Huawei, Xiaomi catch up with Samsung

Global smartphone shipments fell for the fourth consecutive quarter in July to September, accelerating to a 6.0 percent year on year decline (1.8% in Q2) according to the latest report from IDC. A total of 355.2 million units shipped in Q3, compared to 377.8 million a year earlier, as the Chinese market posted declining sales for the sixth straight quarter. IDC continued to maintain that the market will return to growth in 2019 but refrained from specifying what that growth will look like.
 
In terms of vendors, Samsung continued its downward trend with shipments falling 13.4 percent to 72.2 million units followed declines of 10 percent, 2 percent and 4 percent in the previous three quarters. The report said the market share leader continues to feel pressure from all directions, especially with China’s Huawei inching closer to the top after its second consecutive quarter as the number two vendor. In addition, growing markets like India and Indonesia are being changed by the rapid growth of other Chinese brands such as Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo.
 
Huawei’s smartphone shipments soared by 32.9 percent in the third quarter to once again surpass Apple as the world’s second largest smartphone brand with 52.0 million sales and a 14.6 percent market share compared to Samsung’s 20.3 percent and Apple’s 13.2 percent. The latter’s iPhone shipments were up 0.5 percent year on year to 46.7 million with the report predicting an improved fourth quarter thanks to the inclusion of shipments for the highly popular iPhone XR.
 
Xiaomi and Oppo rounded out the top five with sales of 34.3 million and 29.9 million for market shares of 9.7 percent and 8.4 percent respectively. Xiaomi sales were up 21.2 percent year on year thanks to a grow market presence in India, Indonesia and European markets like Spain, while Oppo shipments were down 2.1 percent from a year ago after shifting its focus to some of its newer flagship devices.

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