Huawei’s smartphone market share continues to grow into 2019

According to the latest smartphone shipments report by Gartner, more than 373-million devices were distributed in Q1 2019. That’s a drop of 2.7% compared to the same period in 2018, but a more worrying 8.6% drop quarter-over-quarter.

Samsung continues to hold the largest portion of the market, shipping 71.6-million devices in the quarter. That’s 19.2% of the global smartphone market.

Huawei is perhaps the best performer. It grew from 40.4-million devices shipped in Q1 2018, to 58.4-million in Q1 2019. Overall, that’s an increase in market share from 10.5% to 15.7%.

“Huawei did particularly well in two of its biggest regions, Europe and Greater China, where its smartphone sales grew by 69% and 33%, respectively,” noted Anshul Gupta, Gartner’s senior research director.

Apple’s now firmly the world’s third biggest smartphone seller, shipping 44.5-million units in Q1 2019. That’s a drop of 10-million units, or 17.6%, compared to the same period last year.

Oppo’s market share grew slightly too, while fifth-placed Vivo also made up for Apple’s losses.

And in case you’re wondering, Xiaomi shipped 27.2-million devices in Q1 2019 — just 200 000 less than Vivo — placing it sixth overall.

Feature image: The Huawei P20 Pro, by Andy Walker/Memeburn