Despite the United States-led campaign against Huawei, it remains the leading smartphones in China beating the iPhone for times over. The new report from market research firm Canalys showed that Huawei dominated the Chinese smartphone market in the first quarter of 2019. The report showed that the company gained a 34 percent share while its competitors Oppo, Vivo, Xiomi, and Apple struggled to compete.
Huawei is the only major smartphone player that was able to grow in China's market. In the first three months of the year, Huawei shipped nearly 30 million phones. The sales increased 41 percent compared to the same period a year earlier. Catalys reported that the sales of Apple suffered the worst decline in two years in the first quarter by 30 percent to 6.5 million phones.
Apple's iPhone struggles globally and, in its report on Tuesday, its global sales for the first quarter dropped 17 percent from the previous year. Canalys said that it represents the largest single-quarter decline in the history of the iPhone.
According to Mo Jia, Huawei is the strongest it's ever been in China. Huawei added more outlets and it has pushed into rural areas. It also filled its stores with more smart devices and accessories to attract more customers. The analyst also said that the investments have helped Huawei gain customers from other vendors, such as Oppo and Vivo, which used to enjoy absolute dominance in offline channels.
Huawei and other Chinese smartphones popularity in the market surpassed the iPhone because they offer a wide range of low to high-end models which appeal to more cost-conscious buyers.
In the past six years, the smartphone market of China suffered its worst contraction with overall shipments declining 3 percent to 88 million phones.
Huawei currently stands as the biggest competition of Samsung as the world's largest smartphone maker.
According to the market research firm IDC, the smartphone sales of Huawei increased more than 50 percent worldwide in the first quarter to 59 million devices. Samsung, on the other hand, shipped more than 70 million smartphones during the same period, a decline of 8 percent from the previous year.
IDC said in a report that Huawei is now within striking distance of Samsung at the top of the global market.
The United States is continuing its campaign of blocking the entry of Huawei into the Western market. Recently, reports circulated that it is lobbying against the use of Huawei in British 5G phone networks when the embassy in London hosts an event on Tuesday.
