The year 2020 has been a rough year for most of the smartphone makers in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The market has seen a great impact due to the disruption in the supply chain and factories in China. Moreover, the lockdown policies imposed in many countries also affected the sales of smartphones. Last but not least, customers were less interested in non-essential goodies during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. After several months, it seems that the Chinese smartphone shipments are finally getting back to normal. The results were quite positive during Q3 2020.
The information comes straight from Digitimes Research. According to the report, the Chinese smartphone vendors saw their global shipments rise to 182 million. It’s a 10.6% increase in comparison to the previous quarter. However, it still represents a 5.6% drop when compared to Q3 2019. Still, it’s a signal that the market is recovering after so many casualties.
Gizchina News of the week
Huawei falls, Oppo, Xiaomi, Vivo rise
Several Chinese OEMs scored good results, but Huawei wasn’t among them. Unfortunately, the brand who was one of the world’s leading brands and the biggest menace to Samsung is suffering from the US ban. Especially now that it lost its HiSillicon chipset division and keeps losing more and more every month. The Chinese Behemot recorded a 25.5% decline in overall shipment in the third quarter unlike its rivals – Xiaomi, Vivo, and Oppo. Nevertheless, the big four brands accounted for 74.3% of the total shipments recorded. Once again, this is less than the results of Q3 2019.
According to the report, the Chinese smartphone makers will account for about 5% of the total global shipment in Q4 2020. However, the results will still be below that of Q4 2019. The research firm speculates that Huawei may get dethroned as its rivals continue to increase their global shipments. The Chinese firms brought a set of smartphones during Q3 2020, we expect more to come in Q4 2020. For instance, Xiaomi’s POCO still has a mid-range phone set to launch globally in early December. Moreover, we’re expecting Redmi to unveil the new Redmi Note 10 series before the end of the year. Realme, Vivo, and Oppo are likely to keep bringing more devices to not lose space for the competition. Vivo, for example, has a new Vivo X60 smartphone set to debut next month with the Android 11-based Origin OS. Everything can change in the future, but definitively the market is recovering now.