Huawei retains second spot in global sales despite Trump’s ban

Sales figures released by Gartner showed the first quarter of sales growth for Samsung and Apple failing to make ground on Hauwei, despite the difficult few months the Chinese manufacturer has had to contend with.

Trump’s announcement that Huawei would be banned from trading with US companies would effectively have forced the company to stop using the Android operating system going forward.

The subsequent deferment of the ban helped Huawei recover slightly, but its strong sales growth in China was the main factor in the company producing a strong quarter despite Trump’s ban.

Huawei sales boost in China

Huawei’s sales numbers were down globally, but increased a staggering 31% in China. This is thanks to strong promotions, brand positioning and most likely an increase in anti-Trump sentiment in the country.

Samsung showed sales growth for the first time after six quarters of declines in sales. This was no doubt aided by Huawei’s troubles.

The South Korean hardware giant has also changed its focus to mid-tier phones with a number of new entry-level and mid-range phones.

Achieving growth is a challenge

Gartner found that the demand for flagship phones continued to wane; many premium features begin to make their way into mid-range smartphones.

“Demand for Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S10 started to weaken during the quarter, however, indicating that achieving growth in 2019 as a whole will be a challenge,” said Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner.

Apple managed to slow it’s continuing decline in sales slightly this quarter; still selling 13.8% less than the same quarter last year.

Consumers want more from their phones

Gartner analysts are of the opinion that Apple users no longer see enough improvement in the annual upgrades; the company begins to see larger percentages of its income coming from the sale of services rather than hardware.

“Too few incremental benefits are preventing existing iPhone users from replacing their smartphones,” said Mr Gupta.

China sold the most smartphones again in the second quarter with 101m smartphones during the second quarter. Retailers began clearing their 4G stock to make way for the incoming 5G handsets.

Brazil was the only other country in the Top 5. The growth is an indication that’s Brazil’s economy could just be beginning to improve.

Huawei constantly improves its service

Huawei will soon introduce the limited Amber Sunrise dual-colour edition for P30 models. Patents were initially filed with EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office) back in May, and approved on 23 August 2019.

According to Let’s Go Digital, the first patent shows a variant of the “breathing crystal” colour scheme, where the lower part of the smartphone is the same as the “breathing crystal” model, but the upper side is light blue.

The second design patent shows a Huawei P30 with two colours, this time the top is black and the bottom grey. The new models may be on display at IFA 2019 in Berlin from 6 September to 11 September.

Note: The high-resolution 3D renders of the Huawei P30 used in this article was created by Let’s Go Digital.

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