Huawei continues to grow as Apple's China sales fall

Huawei’s future outside of China may be marked with huge question marks, but there’s nothing to doubt about its success in its home market. Canalys this week shared a report indicating that the smartphone giant had grown its market share on the mainland. In Q3 2019, the firm shipped a total of 9 million for a total of 42% market share. In contrast, Apple shipped 5.1 million units to capture 5.2%, a drop from the 7.1 million units it had shipped the year before.

Canalys says that while the firm’s iPhone 11 launch helped it, the lack of 5G in current iPhones may hinder growth potential as local vendors push their technological superiority over Apple.

The lack of Google Play Services have done nothing to hurt  Huawei in China, and the framing of the US ban as an attack on China may also have helped, if only a little.

“Huawei opened a huge gap between itself and other vendors. It has 25% more share than this quarter’s runner-up, Vivo,” commented Nicole Peng, Canalys VP of mobility. “Its dominant position gives Huawei a lot of power to negotiate with the supply chain and to increase its wallet share within channel partners. Huawei is in a strong position to consolidate its dominance further amid 5G network rollout, given its tight operator relationships in 5G network deployment, and control over key components such as local network-compatible 5G chipsets compared with local peers. This puts significant pressure on Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi, which find it very hard to make any breakthrough.”

“Apple is more prepared than in previous years to face strong headwinds in China,” Liu further added. “Its iPhone 11 models focused on camera improvements, which proved desirable to Chinese consumers. More importantly, a lower launch price of iPhone 11 and a more flexible channel margin structure for local distribution on the new devices, were critical market stimuli for Apple. But it faces a looming challenge, as Chinese vendors and operators are set to drive heavy marketing and promotions around 5G in the next two quarters. This could steal its thunder.”

Source: Canalys