The high prices and a few other reasons made the first wholesale volume of 5G smartphones not exceed expectations. The latest report released by China Information and Communication Research Institute shows that in August this year, the total shipment volume of the domestic smartphone market reached 30.875 million units, down 5.3% year-on-year. Those phones include 29.478 million 4G phones and 219,000 5G phones. Yesterday, Huawei released its first folding screen handset, namely the Mate X. It costs as much as 16999 yuan ($2405). In fact, this phone was announced back in February this year, but it came only now.
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At the launch event, the manufacturer announced they have already reached 200-million sold smartphones mark. Thus, they reached this number 64 days earlier than in 2018. Moreover, the company expects to sell over 10 million units of its newly-announced Mate 30 flagship. Also, they predict that the total shipments will reach 250 million in 2019.
Last year, Huawei sold 206 million units. And though the 250-million mark is a big move forward in comparison to the previous year’s data, initially, the company has been planning to reach the mark of 300 million units.
‘In the case of the US sanctions, Huawei’s smartphone shipments still maintained a 26% increase. If there are no sanctions, we estimate that our shipments should be the first in the world this year,’ Huawei Consumers Business CEO Yu Chengdong once told reporters.
In fact, there is nothing odd in the words of Yu Chengdong. Also, we should take into account that currently, only Huawei is offering a dual-mode smartphone. We mean most 5G smartphones on the market are single-mode devices with the NSA support. Yu Chengdong said: ‘NSA will soon be eliminated, SA is the true 5G.’
