Huawei overtakes Samsung as top smartphone seller
China’s Huawei has overtak- en Samsung to become the number-one smartphone seller
worldwide in the second quar- ter on the back of strong domes- tic demand, industry tracker Canalys said Thursday.
Canalys said the embattled firm, which is facing US sanc- tions and falling overseas sales, shipped 55.8 million devices -- overtaking Samsung for the first time, which shifted 53.7m units.
The findings marked the first quarter in nine years that a com- pany other than Samsung or Apple has led the market, Can- alys said.
US sanctions had “stifled” Huawei’s business outside mainland China, the research group added, but it had grown to dominate its substantial home market.
More than 70 per cent of Hua- wei smartphones are now sold in the country, Canalys said, where Samsung has a very small share of the market.
Huawei said in a statement it was a sign of “exceptional re- silience”.
Overseas shipments, however, fell nearly a third in the second quarter and Canalys analyst Mo Jia warned that strength in Chi-
na alone “will not be enough to sustain Huawei at the top once the global economy starts to recover”.
“Its major channel partners in key regions, such as Europe, are increasingly wary of ranging Huawei devices, taking on fewer models, and bringing in new brands to reduce risk,” Mo said.
Huawei -- the world’s top producer of telecoms network- ing equipment -- has become a pivotal issue in the geopolitical standoff between Beijing and Washington, which claims the firm poses a significant cyber- security threat.
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