Huawei Overtakes Apple to Become World's Second Biggest Smartphone Vendor in Q2 2018: Gartner

HIGHLIGHTS

• The report has been published by analyst firm Gartner
• It matches the findings of the IDC report earlier this month
• Samsung retained the top spot

Huawei has overtaken Apple to become the world's second largest smartphone vendor in the

second quarter of 2018, if a new report from UK-based market research firm Gartner is to be 

believed. This statistic matches the one in the report by IDC from earlier this month. The 

Gartner report also noted that the overall global smartphone sales grew 2 percent in the 

same quarter to 374 million units. The firm recorded more than 49 million shipments for 

Huawei and more than 44 million units for Apple in Q2 of 2018.


As was consistent with the IDC report earlier, Samsung maintained the top spot with more 

than 72 million shipments in the same quarter, however the South Korean manufacturer 

recorded a 12.7 percent decline over the same quarter last year. "Samsung faces slowing 

global smartphone demand and ever-growing competition from Chinese manufacturers," 

said Anshul Gupta, Research Director at Gartner. "The slowing demand for its flagship 

smartphones left Samsung with lower profitability. It now expects the Galaxy Note

9 smartphone to revive growth."


Back in May this year, the first quarter report from Gartner revealed a different picture. 

Samsung was in the top spot with 20.8 percent market share, Apple came second with 14.1 

percent, and Huawei was ranked third with 10.5 percent share.


Focusing on Huawei's significant growth in the quarter, Gupta said, "Huawei's smartphone 

sales grew 38.6 percent in the second quarter of 2018. Huawei continues to bring innovative

features into its smartphones and expand its smartphone portfolio to cover larger consumer 

segments. Its investment into channels, brand building and positioning of the Honor devices 

helped drive sales. Huawei is shipping its Honor smartphones into 70 markets worldwide 

and is emerging as Huawei's key growth driver."


While not having seen a decline,Apple's smartphone market maintained a rather flat quarter 

with 0.9 percent growth in Q2 2018. Gartner claimed that the early slowdown in demand for 

the iPhone X is to blame for the Cupertino giant taking the third position in the tally. Apart 

from the top three stalwarts, Xiaomi and Oppo took the fourth and fifth position, respectively. 

Gartner suggests that the adoption of a unified retail model, with offline and online 

integration, has helped Xiaomi secure the fourth spot in the second quarter of 2018.


As for mobile operating system market share, Gartner reported that 

Google's Android extended the lead over Apple's iOS with an 88 percent share compared to 

iOS' 11.9 percent.