Despite the success of smartphone sales, as is true with almost any other business, there are only so many customers to go around. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Samsung have barely seen their positions at the top of the smartphone industry challenged. A Chinese company has started to change that. Huawei announced its smartphone sales rose 62% in the first half.
As a part of the disclosure about its results, Huawei reported:
Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, today announced the business performance of its Consumer Business Group (BG) for the first half of 2014. During this period, Huawei shipped a total of 64.21 million devices. Smartphones accounted for 34.27 million units, showing an impressive year-on-year increase of 62%.
Apple’s lead is still considerable. For the past quarter, Apple said iPhone sales were 35.2 billion. However, that was a sequential drop of 19% from the previous quarter. Apple’s lead should be made much larger by the launch of the iPhone 6.
However, Huawei’s success is in several markets in which Apple has not done as well. Huawei’s management reported:
Huawei’s performance over the past six months was fuelled largely by the tremendous growth in overseas markets where Huawei intensified global marketing initiatives. In Q2 2014 alone, Huawei shipped a total of 20.56 million smartphones to markets in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, an increase of 85% compared to last year. Huawei’s commitment to branding efforts in these markets contributed to the impressive shipment growth results of 550% in the Middle East and Africa, 275% in Latin America, 180% in Asia-Pacific and 120% in Europe. Huawei also held majority smartphone market share in selected markets in Asia and Latin America.
According to IDC, in the fourth quarter of 2014, Huawei had a China market share of 10% to Apple’s 7%. This critical market is already crowded with leaders Samsung and Lenovo taking 32%.
Not long ago, many analysts assumed that Apple would never have a major challenger in the smartphone market. Samsung changed that. Now several smaller companies want to change it more. At or near the head of this pack is Huawei.
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