Huawei Becomes Apple’s Big China Competitor

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 4:12AM EST · Published Aug 27, 9:45AM EDT

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Huawei Becomes Apple’s Big China Competitor — © Thinkstock

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) management says China shipments are critical to its success, but some analysts say its market share there has dropped to fifth place. One of the reasons is Huawei, the third largest smartphone company in the world, behind Samsung and Apple. Most of its shipments are in China.

According to Strategic Analytics, iPhone sales did slip to fifth in the second quarter. Its China shipments were 7.3 million, down from 9.7 million the year before. Granted, overall smartphone shipments dipped in China for the period, but just a bit to 105.9 million from 109.0 million in the second quarter of last year.

By comparison, Huawei’s second-quarter shipments for the period were 19.1 million, up from 16.6 million a year earlier. Huawei is not the only home-grown competitor. Shipments of OPPO moved to 15.2 million from 7.3 million. Shipments by Xiaomi rose to 19.5 million. But it did lose ground, down from 12.8 million the year before.

Globally, the picture is better for Apple, but that could change if Huawei can get into large markets. According to Gartner, in the second quarter worldwide, Samsung shipped 76.7 million smartphones, Apple shipped 44.4 million and Huawei 30.7 million.

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Huawei may have a product that could compete with the iPhone, which makes matters worse for Apple.

The Androids Huawei Mate 8 is a worthy competitor for the iPhone 6. And, like all other manufactures, the Androids Huawei Mate 8 will be updated soon. Huawei couldn’t sell so many phones without clever engineers and marketers. Its unit shipment numbers show it has both.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.