Mobile Technology

Why are Apple and Samsung losing ground to Huawei

According to market data released by the consultancy research firm Gartner, Samsung and Apple are progressively losing their quota of the smart phone market. Smart phone potential purchasers are being turned off by the high sales prices attached to their top phones.

Samsung has the largest market share with 893 million devices equating to 27% and Apple a close second with 24%, however, both have dipped, about 1 to 2% in their market share in the fourth quarter, according to the latest research figures.

Conversely, China’s Huawei share of the market climbed to nearly 15% in the months leading up to December 2018; 4% up from the same period of time the previous year. Gartner nicknamed 2018 “the year of Huawei” after it had demonstrated the highest growth within the top five smart phone manufacturers. The data showed strong sales performances in Chinese and European regions amongst others.

In the emerging markets such as China, Apple is losing ground to leading Chinese players such as Huawei, who have significantly increased the quality and technology of their smart phones.

Apple sales in the fourth quarter were down 11% on the previous year selling 64.5 million phones.

Apple customers look like they are holding onto their older phones for much longer, with may opting for much cheaper sim only deals, rather than splashing out on the high cost of newer devices.

The featured offered by the new players from China offer very similar specifications when compared with Apple and Samsung and their prices are considerably lower.

With the increased innovation of these new players they are making major strides into international markets, and users are demonstrating the same price of owning a Chinese phone as they would with any of the other brand market leaders.

With the success of the Huawei P20 which was launched in the UK at £599 which under cuts the Samsung Galaxy S9 by £140 and the iPhone X by £400 the manufacturer looks set to take an increasing slice of the market, and with its new P30 flagship model launch on March 26th in Paris with a tweet posted by the company pledging “rules were made to be rewritten” we will have to watch the space for the final spec of this model, but it has been rumoured it will feature quad-camera array at the back of the phone. The Samsung Galaxy A9 was the first phone to four which offered ultra-wide shorts and increase zoom features.

We will have to wait for Paris show to see the actual phone in all its glory.

About the author

David Evans

David is Editor-in-chief.

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