Gartner: Huawei sold more smartphones than Apple in Q2 this year

Peter, 28 August 2018

A month ago IDC reported that Huawei surpassed Apple to become the second largest smartphone maker by shipments. Today Gartner came out with a similar statement, but this time measuring the sales.

Huawei saw its smartphone sales grow by 38.6% in Q2 this year. The main driving force behind the growth was the Honor sub-brand, which is available in 70 markets.

Apple’s sales barely changed compared to last year – the difference is less than 1%. Interest in the iPhone X faded quicker than in Apple’s earlier top models. The iPhone 8 duo was seen as an incremental upgrade, which slowed the growth even further.

Worldwide Top 5 Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor in 2Q18 (Thousands of Units)

Vendor	Q2 2018 Units	Q2 2018 Market Share (%)	Q2 2017 Units	Q2 2017 Market Share (%)
Samsung	72,336.4	19.3	82,855.3	22.6
Huawei	49,846.5	13.3	35,964.3	9.8
Apple	44,715.1	11.9	44,314.8	12.1
Xiaomi	32,825.5	8.8	21,178.5	5.8
OPPO	28,511.1	7.6	26,092.5	7.1
Others	146,096.1	39.0	156,190.8	42.6
Total	374,330.6	100.0	366,596.1	100.0

Source: Gartner (August 2018)

Meanwhile Samsung’s smartphone sales dropped 12.6%, but the company is still in the leading position by quite a margin. Demand for Galaxy flagships fell, which hurt Samsung’s profitability. The Galaxy Note9 is expected to revitalize the growth.

Xiaomi leapfrogged Oppo as its sales grew by 55%. Gartner attributes this to Xiaomi combined online and retail strategy.

As for operating systems, there’s not much to say. The market share of iOS mirrors Apple’s sales, everything else is Android.

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 2Q18 (Thousands of Units)

Operating System	Q2 2018 Units	Q2 2018 Market Share (%)	Q2 2017 Units	Q2 2017 Market Share (%)
Android	329,503.4	88.0	321,848.2	87.8
iOS	44,715.1	11.9	44,314.8	12.1
Other OS	112.1	0.0	433.1	0.1
Total	374,330.6	100.0	366,596.1	100.0

Source

Reader comments

GSMarena
30 Aug 2018
UD{

Its not the number of phones that matter.. Its profit. profit. profit. Samsung, apple, sony and LG are unsinkable ships.. because they don't sell only phones unlike other company.

Anonymous
30 Aug 2018
IHx

With phones like this https://twitter.com/Androidheadline/status/1035138618526814208 they may stay ahead of apple

Realistic1
30 Aug 2018
3qE

Reasons for getting iPhone SE were simple: 1. You currently won't find better phone in that price range. 2. I really like compact phones. 3. I need something that just works, and iPhone simply does that. I use 3 apps respecivley, Whatsapp, Snap...