Global smartphone market returns to growth, driven entirely by Samsung and Huawei

Shipments in the global smartphone industry returned to growth for the first time in two years according to the latest numbers from Strategy Analytics.

A total of 366 million smartphones were shipped in Q3 2019, which is 2% up on the year-ago number. Only two vendors experienced growth themselves, however, with market leader Samsung up 8% and second-placed Huawei up 29%. Huawei has doubled its share of the global smartphone market in the past three years, largely at the expense of the long tail, with once prominent brands like Sony, HTC and Alcatel being swallowed up.

“Samsung shipped 78.2 million smartphones worldwide in Q3 2019, jumping 8 percent annually from 72.3 million units in Q3 2018,” said Neil Mawston of SA. “Samsung has lifted its global smartphone marketshare from 20 percent to 21 percent in the past year. Strong sales of the premium Galaxy Note 10 and mass-market A Series models boosted Samsung’s smartphone shipments and profit during the quarter.

“Huawei once again surprised everyone and grew its global smartphone shipments by an impressive 29 percent annually from 51.8 million during Q3 2018 to 66.7 million in Q3 2019. Huawei captured a record 18 percent global smartphone marketshare in Q3 2019, up sharply from 14 percent a year ago. Huawei surged at home in China during the quarter, as the firm sought to offset regulatory uncertainty in other major regions such as North America and Western Europe.”

That’s an understatement if we compare SA’s global numbers with Canalys’s China ones from yesterday. Canalys has Huawei’s shipments in China alone increasing by 16.5 million units, while SA has its global shipments increasing by 12.5 million. In other words Huawei shipments to everywhere except china decreased by 4 million, which is considerable.

There’s something odd about those Huawei China numbers. To suddenly grab 18 points of market share in such an incredibly competitive market stretches the limits of plausibility. But even if we assume the numbers are legit, Huawei must have made some pretty exceptional business moves to pull them off and we have to question how sustainable they are.