It looks like as if it’s a dawn of an all-new era, where Huawei has reportedly managed to overtake the Silicon-Valley giant in the second quarter of 2018. Displacing Apple from the position, Huawei is now considered the world’s second largest phone manufacturer.
Huawei’s growth has been phenomenal. They have managed to sell nearly 41 percent more units than they did in the same second quarter last year. This means that the 54 million cell phones they sold in this quarter were in great demand, especially Huawei P20 which is currently the manufacturer’s flagship.
Even the world’s largest phone manufacturer is slowly seeing a decline. Although they managed to ship 73 million handsets in this quarter, it is still seen as an 8 percent decline when compared with the past year. Even Apple, with its quite innovative lineup, only managed a one percent growth rate over the past year, by managing to ship 41 million iPhones.
According to Canalys analyst, Mo Jia, “Huawei’s strategy has evolved significantly over the last six months.” He further stated that “Despite its failure to strike a US carrier partnership earlier this year, the company has turned around quickly, moving away from its drive for profitability and focusing instead on finding volume growth at the low end.”
It should be noted that Apple might be able to take its position back through its highly expected new lineup of iPhones coming in September. According to Ryan Reith, who is the vice president at IDC, “It is worth noting that Apple moved into the top position each of the last two holiday quarters following its product refresh, so it’s likely we’ll see continued movement among the top-ranked companies in 2018 and beyond.”
Perhaps, it is time that companies like Apple and Samsung also decided to focus less on profitability, since both of them have rather seen sluggish phone sales. This is mainly because companies like Xaiomi, Huawei or One Plus are offering flagship phones with nearly similar or even better performance and features at a much lesser price. Furthermore, with many people not willing to upgrade, because of just a few minor designs or feature changes, smartphone sales have slowed down. Yet it is amazing how Huawei has still managed to hold on to its customer base.
This news is surely going to mock the officials over at CIA, FBI and the National Security since these were the ones who reportedly asked American cell phones users to not to buy Huawei phones. The excuse was that they thought the Chinese phones could be used to spy on them. This did affect Huawei to an extent that Verizon and AT&T didn’t come through with their plan on selling the Mate 10 Pro, reportedly because of political pressure.
But then end of the day, the sole winner is Huawei, which amidst a form of social boycott and all, still managed to overtake a company like Apple.