Huawei becomes the second largest smartphone brand in the world after Samsung

According to a research from Counterpoint's Market Pulse for July 2017, Huawei has surpassed Apple in global smartphone sales for the first time. The research also notes that Huawei is now the second largest smartphone vendor globally, after Samsung.

Counterpoint's Research Director Peter Richardson attributes Huawei's success to its strong foothold in home market China, consistent investment in R&D and manufacturing as well as aggressive marketing. Besides, with the way Huawei is going about in the market, researchers predict strong sales in August for the Chinese vendor, and a hat-trick for Huawei could be on the cards as well.

"While this streak could be temporary, considering the annual iPhone refresh is just around the corner, it nevertheless underscores the rate at which Huawei has been growing. However, a weak presence in the South Asian, Indian and North American markets limit Huawei's potential in the near-to mid-term to take a sustainable second place position behind Samsung. Huawei is over-dependent on its home market China where it enjoys the leadership position and operator-centric markets in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East," Richardson said while discussing this key competitive development.

He further added, "This is a significant milestone for Huawei, the largest Chinese smartphone brand with a growing global presence. It speaks volumes for this primarily network infrastructure vendor on how far it has grown in the consumer mobile handset space in the last three to four years. The global scale Huawei has been able to achieve can be attributed to its consistent investment in R&D and manufacturing, coupled with aggressive marketing and sales channel expansion."

According to Counterpoint's Associate Director, Tarun Pathak, who was talking about future prospects and other findings, said that Chinese smartphone brands cannot be ignored and in fact they have taken leadership positions in key markets like China, Europe, Asia, and Latin America which has restricted the growth prospects for leading global brands such as Samsung and Apple. "Chinese brands are growing swiftly thanks not only to smartphone design, manufacturing capability, and rich feature sets but also by out-smarting and out-spending rivals in sales channels, go-to-market, and marketing promotion strategies," noted Pathak.

Mr. Pathak, also added, "Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi have successfully gained access to key supply chain partners, which has allowed them to launch designs with bezel-free, full displays, Augmented Reality, in-house chipsets and advanced camera features, that have kept them toe-to-toe with rivals. These players have become as equally important as Samsung or Apple to the global supply chain, application developers, and distribution channels, as they continue to grow in scale more rapidly than the incumbent market share leaders."

Talking about the best-selling models in the month of July, Oppo has been one of the fastest growing brands globally thanks to its popular R11 and A57 smartphones - the third and fourth best-selling smartphones respectively globally. World's best-selling smartphone models remain Apple iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. Other devices include Samsung Galaxy S8, Xiaomi Redmi Note 4X, and Samsung Galaxy S8+.

"While Huawei climbed to world's second largest brand overall, it is surprising to see none of its models break into top ten rankings. This is due to a multiple SKU portfolio that currently lacks a true hero device. While having a diverse portfolio allows Huawei to fight on multiple fronts, it does little to build overall brand recognition, something Huawei badly needs if it continues to gain share," senior Analyst, Pavel Naiya said.