China's Huawei is now the largest smartphone maker in the world

• 2020-08-08
• News

China's Huawei is now the largest smartphone maker in the world

Huawei overtook Samsung and Apple in the second quarter of 2020 to become the world's largest smartphone maker for the first time.

The latest Canalys report showed that most sales came from China while its international business suffers as a result of US sanctions.

The Chinese company sold 55.8 million smartphones, down 5% from a year earlier.

Meanwhile, South Korea's Samsung (which is second in China sales), sold 53.7 million devices, down 30% from the same period last year.

Overall, smartphone shipments in international markets fell 27% in the second quarter of this year from a year earlier.

Statistics show that Huawei sold 70% of its smartphones in China in the second quarter.

Huawei's market share in Europe, a key region for the company, dropped to 16% in the second quarter, from 22% in the same period in 2019.

Huawei is the third-largest smartphone maker in Europe after Samsung and Apple.

Analysts say that given China's massive population, success in the Chinese market spurs companies to a large share of the global market.

Analysts also say that maintaining this lead is not easy for Huawei in the long term as its European channel partners increasingly move away from Huawei devices and prefer to replace new brands to reduce the risk of doing business with Huawei. 

Strength in China alone will not be enough to sustain Huawei at the top once the global economy starts to recover.

Huawei's high sales are the result of the company's efforts to do international business amid pressure from the united states. The Chinese tech company topped the US Entity list in 2019, which restricted its access to US technology. 

The company was forced to launch its own operating system called "HarmonyOS" last year.