Chinese technology company Huawei has outstripped Samsung and Apple (AAPL) in terms of shipment growth. Apple had on Tuesday reported that it shipped 41.3 million smartphones in the third quarter, which constitutes 12.1% of the market share. On the other hand, Huawei sold 54.2 million smartphones, capturing 15.8% of the market share.
Samsung is still the leader with 71.5 million smartphones shipments and 20.9% market share during the quarter.
When compared with the prior-year quarter, Samsung has lost 10.4% of its market share. Most of these customers seem to have shifted to Huawei, which has seen a staggering 41% year-over-year growth in shipment. Apple shipments saw a modest increase of 0.7%.
Experts believe that Huawei and Samsung have an edge over Apple as they launch devices more often. Market analysts expect Apple to follow a similar sales strategy revamp in a few years.
During the second quarter, Huawei benefited from the strong sales of its P20, the success of its Honor brand, and its focus on finding volume growth at the low end. This growth is valuable for Huawei as it had earlier this year failed to strike a partnership with a US carrier.
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In comparison, an analyst at Canalys believes that Apple has faced a seasonally weak second-quarter as shipments were in-line with last year. The company was not able to carry over the higher volume growth of iPhone X from the previous quarters to this quarter despite the hefty price tag. The analyst said this is the first time in seven years that the top positions are not being held by Samsung and Apple.
Meanwhile, Huawei has made a smartphone, which has the largest screen size, close to that of a tablet. Huawei’s Honor Note 10 smartphone comes with 6.95-inch AMOLED screen, while the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 has a 6.3-inch display and the Apple iPhone X Plus comes with a 6.5-inch screen.
The Honor Note 10 smartphone comes with a bundle of additional features to give stiff competition to Apple and Samsung. The features include octa-core Kirin 970 processor with GPU Turbo technology, Android 8.1 Oreo, 6GB RAM, dual-rear camera 24-megapixel and 16-megapixel, a 13-megapixel front-facing camera, 64 or 128 GB internal storage, fingerprint sensor and 5,000 mAh battery. The 64 GB and 128 GB models are priced at around $410 and $470 respectively in China.