In this article, we will not talk about who is right and who is wrong in the situation with Huawei and the US government. Instead, we'd rather just turn our attention to one interesting fact. Analysts' reports are usually not released on the last day of the month due to the fact that they need to analyze and prepare everything. It is for this reason that reports on global smartphone sales for April have just started coming in. Based on the data of these reports, it turns out that Huawei, even taking into account the fact that their smartphones do not support Google services, still somehow managed to get ahead of Samsung itself, which increased sales in the middle segment. How did this happen?
These companies are often compared to each other.
Huawei sells better than Samsung
In April this year, the company Huawei truly surpassed Samsung to become the largest smartphone maker in the world. The company has temporarily captured 19% of the global market share, according to Counterpoint Research's monthly Market Point Pulse. In comparison, Samsung's share of the global smartphone market fell to 17%. Two percent may seem like something insignificant, but given the scale of the market, the bill in this case goes to tens of millions of dollars.
In fact, the answer to the question of why this happened is quite simple and there is no mysticism. Counterpoint's vice president of research, Neil Shah, said that Huawei has benefited largely from the Chinese market, where the company has been stepping up its efforts since the infamous US ban on US companies. Shah also said that the Chinese smartphone market has returned to normal in terms of supply and demand, which has generated Huawei such a significant increase in sales.
It should be understood that despite the large number of Chinese companies that produce smartphones and their fairly high quality lately, buyers in the domestic market still prefer Huawei. The entry into force of the ban has once again spurred the population, which is bound by very high standards of social morality and community, to act according to the principle of “they are beating us”. That is why many Chinese people even abandoned their beloved iPhone and went to buy Huawei. The rest switched to these smartphones from other brands, like Xiaomi, OPPO, Asus and others.
After the introduction of sanctions, sales Huawei in China even improved.
Samsung Sales Statistics
Interestingly, the analyst also noted that sales of Samsung smartphones in key markets for the company, such as India, the United States, Latin America and some European countries, practically fell to zero in April. In April of this year, many of these countries were under severe quarantine and people simply did not go shopping to buy new equipment. Last but not least, they paid attention to the purchase of new smartphones.
Even if people were ready to buy in the same volumes, many are still not ready to do it via the Internet and they need to first touch the new product. In addition, the wave of cuts that swept the world amid the financial crisis had a strong impact on purchasing power. This is especially true for expensive models like the Samsung Galaxy S20 line.
A small improvement in position Huawei is welcome for the brand, but it will likely not last long. The company reportedly expects its sales to drop 20% in 2020, largely due to the very ban on US trade and partnerships with US companies. So far, this has only led to the lack of Google certification, but the new bans that have already been introduced will prohibit Huawei from working with other technologies, patents for which are owned by the United States or American companies. This will hit the processors the most.
Kirin processors have always been a plus Huawei. Now they can lose it.
How the sanctions affected sales Huawei
The US cut off access Huawei to its largest chip supplier, TSMC, in another potentially devastating blow to the company. Perhaps the telecommunications giant will be able to come up with something with MediaTek, but this is not the same level, and there, too, not everything is so simple. It is almost impossible to come up with your own technologies that will allow you to get around the ban. This takes a lot of time and money.
Meanwhile, sales of smartphones Huawei in Europe have already decreased by almost 40% compared to the same period last year, and outside China Xiaomi it seems to pick up all buyers who refused Huawei because of her problems. If you look at the statistics and see that only Xiaomi did not decrease its sales in the world in the first quarter, it becomes obvious.
Hopefully the company can continue its winning streak in China to compensate for its declining popularity in other regions. According to IDC, early price hikes Huawei for the Mate 30 and P30 series, as well as significant price cuts for the Honor V30 and 9X models, have helped the company stay in the Chinese market in the first quarter of 2020. Perhaps Huawei can use a similar strategy to promote and increase sales of future phones. For example, such as the Mate 40 series.