While the entire world economy is experiencing very difficult times due to quarantines and restrictive measures, many industries suffer from this very badly, but some find it a little easier. Although the smartphone market offers essentially essential goods, purchases of the first smartphone or a new one instead of a broken (lost) one cannot provide sales growth. Such growth is only possible when users switch their old devices to new ones. Moreover, in droves. Times are not right now, and therefore the smartphone market has fallen very much, but not everything is so simple. There is also something in the statistics that can really surprise.
There are many smartphones, but the market is one and it must be somehow divided.
How phone sales have changed in 2020
If you think smartphone sales have just dropped by a few percent, then you are wrong. Based on data published by analysts, it can be concluded that the first quarter of 2020 was the worst for the industry in its entire history. It sounds intimidating, but it really is.
Against the background of a general fall, Huawei somehow managed to achieve serious success in the Chinese market. Her devices have always been loved there, but the growth is surprising against the background of the fact that the Chinese (of course, not all) spent the entire beginning of the year at home. But this growth was not enough to compensate for the global decline.
Research firm Strategy Analytics released a report on global smartphone sales from January to March 2020, according to which the industry sold 275 million devices worldwide, down 17 percent from the same quarter last year (330.4 million).
Change in sales in millions.
Samsung phones sales statistics
Market leader Samsung sold approximately 58.3 million smartphones worldwide in the first quarter of 2020 – 71.8 million devices were sold in the first quarter of 2019. The decline in sales was even above average and amounted to 19%. This is a real disaster for Samsung. This is the company's lowest sales in eight years. Perhaps an additional factor was the release of Samsung Galaxy S20 models, for which there were a lot of unflattering reviews. However, this alone could not turn the tide and make success a failure. Most likely, in the case of successful sales, the indicators would be literally a couple of percent better.
Are people ready to buy Huawei
For Huawei, the global impact, despite the local success in the local market, turned out to be twice as strong. In addition to the US government's ban on collaboration with Google, the financial crisis and the coronavirus are causing even more losses.
According to the report, in the first quarter of 2020, the company Huawei sold about 48.5 million smartphones, down 18% from the same quarter last year when it sold 59.1 million handsets. Despite all this, Huawei still ranks second in the battle of global manufacturers. The Chinese company has an 18 percent market share.
It's a shame that having released such a smartphone Huawei cannot sell it normally on the world market.
Not least because of that large share in the Chinese market. Anyway, just imagine how big the company's safety margin is, if even in such conditions it lost less than Samsung and retained its place in the top three sales leaders.
The third place in the group of the largest smartphone manufacturers also records a decline in sales. That said, Apple got off relatively easily in percentage terms. While the California-based company sold about 43.1 million iPhone in the first quarter of 2019, those numbers were down only nine percent to 39.2 million units sold in the first quarter of 2020. market of the company not only did not decrease, but, on the contrary, increased and now amounts to 14.3 percent against 13.
Change in market share as a percentage.
Xiaomi increased market share
Another surprise was another Chinese company, which gained more market share than others. For whom the crisis really turned out to be an opportunity. I'm talking about Xiaomi. Lei Jun's company now holds 10 percent of the market, up from 8.3 percent before.
Xiaomi generally feels much better than others. This is the only company in the report that didn’t increase sales in the first quarter of this year compared to the first quarter of last year, but at least didn’t reduce them. What then, what now it has sold 27.5 million smartphones.
Data for analysis is taken precisely as a comparison of the same periods of the year. If we take just the current quarter to the previous one, the picture will be distorted by seasonal factors. For example, October-December of each year is traditionally “fatter” due to the fact that the whole world buys gifts for the New Year and Christmas, in July-September everyone is waiting for what Samsung will show (which Note), Apple and IFA exhibition.
It is still very difficult to say what the future of the industry looks like. Even the best analysts will not be able to predict it, since almost one hundred percent depends on when the pandemic ends and when countries (and their economies) begin to return to normal life. Only one thing is certain. Sales of expensive smartphones will fall dramatically this year. People are simply not ready to pay big money for them now. Although, Samsung Galaxy Z Flip shows good sales, but they are measured in a couple of hundred thousand, and it takes a couple of tens of millions to change something.