Huawei overtakes Apple to become world’s second biggest smartphone brand, but not for long

Huawei is now the world’s second biggest selling smartphone company, surpassing Apple for handset sales for June and July this year worldwide, according to a fresh study from Counterpoint Research.

Based on global smartphone sales, the report states that Huawei’s total smartphone sales managed to climb above Apple’s, despite none of the Chinese manufacturer’s smartphones appearing in the top ten smartphone models based on market share.

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The lead may not last for too long: there’s a pretty good chance the Chinese firm’s position will soon be overtaken when Apple launches its high anticipated iPhone 8 in September. Not only is this likely to happen due to Huawei’s relatively weak presence in North America, South Asia, and India, but because the majority of iOS fans hold off buying a new iPhone in the few months leading up to a new release. So expect Huawei to drop back to third place before the end of the year.

Nevertheless, the report at least demonstrates how quickly Huawei (which was an underdog not so long ago) has managed to gain momentum in a hugely crowded market, pushing out one-time successful rivals such as HTC, which has fallen by the wayside of late.

Counterpoint Research’s director, Peter Richardson, shares this view:

“This is a significant milestone for Huawei, the largest Chinese smartphone brand with a growing global presence,” Richardson said.  “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.”

Regardless of Huawei’s (perhaps temporary) lead over Apple, Samsung is still way ahead of both of them – leading with an almost 10% sales share – and will most likely remain the world’s largest phone manufacturer for some time to come.