Today, Gartner, a well-known research organization, released the statistics on global smartphone sales for the third quarter of 2018. This statistic is the actual sales volume, that is the number of mobile phones that actually arrive at the consumer. The results show that in the third quarter, global smartphone sales increased by 1.4% year-on-year to 389 million units.
Huawei and Xiaomi became the two most important brands to drive growth. Huawei’s sales increased by 43% year-on-year to 52.21 million units. As for Xiaomi, its sales increased by about 20% year-on-year to 33.21 million units. If we exclude Huawei & Xiaomi sales, the total sales of the remaining brands actually fell by 5.2%.
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Although Samsung is still ranked as the top global smartphone, the 14% decline it saw this quarter is the largest year-on-year decline in Gartner’s statistics. This proves that the Galaxy S9 series, Note 9, and its mid-end products are not performing well due to the violent competition from Chinese brands.
Among the top five, Apple ranked third and OPPO ranked fifth. Despite the steady performance of the iPhone, there is no strong fluctuation in its sales volume and market share. This shows that its growth this quarter is slowing down. If the iPhone XS/XR can’t perform well, its fourth-quarter performance will probably see a decline.
