Huawei overtakes Apple in annual race to Samsung’s smartphone crown

From The Verge: Huawei overtook Apple to become the world’s second best selling smartphone manufacturer in 2019, according to reports from Strategy Analytics, Counterpoint Research, and Canalys. Over the course of the year, the Chinese manufacturer reportedly shipped around 240 million phones, compared to just under 200 million for Apple. Samsung retained its comfortable lead in first place, shipping just shy of 300 million devices. Xiaomi and Oppo rounded out the list of the top five manufacturers.

The jump is especially surprising given Huawei’s continued presence on the USA’s entity list, which prevents the company from installing Google’s apps and services on its new devices, limiting their appeal outside of China. As a result, Huawei’s main strength was in its home country. Counterpoint Research says China accounted for 60 percent of its sales, allowing its shipments worldwide to increase by 17 percent between 2018 and 2019 — though not in Q4 specifically.

However, tensions with the US still had an effect. Canalys notes that 2019 could have been the year that Huawei challenged Samsung for the number one smartphone spot, but ultimately this challenge never materialized. It’s unclear when the situation could change in the future.

Huawei has been nipping at Apple’s heels for a while. Back in 2017 Huawei initially overtook Apple to sell more smartphones in the months of June and July, and the following year IDC reported that it had sold more phones than Apple in the second quarter of the year. But in 2019, the company overtook Apple to sell more phones throughout the entire year.

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