Huawei grows 41%, Apple tanks in China

PHOTO: Huawei remains a popular brand in Thailand with models at both ends of the price spectrum

Huawei has dominated the Chinese smartphone market in Q1 2019, taking a record 34% share as rivals Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi and Apple all struggled.

Huawei may feeling the heat from a US-led campaign against the Chinese tech company, but in China its smartphones are outselling the iPhone four to one.

A new report from market research firm Canalys says Huawei was the only major smartphone maker that managed to grow in China’s declining market.

The Shenzhen tech and smartphone manufacturer shipped nearly 30 million phones in the first three months elf 2019. That figure is up a massive 41% year-on-year. At the same time Apple sales plunged by 30% to 6.5 million phones registering its worst decline in two years.

The dramatic drop in Apple’s iPhone sales in China is symptomatic of its a worldwide malaise for the iconic brand. Apple’s global sales for Q1 dropped 17% from the previous year.

The Canalys report records this as the “largest single-quarter decline in the history of the iPhone.

In the past 12 months Huawei opened more retail locations, pushed into China’s rural areas and filled its stores with more devices and accessories beyond its smartphone range to attract shoppers.

Commentators say that, unlike Apple, Huawei and its Chinese counterparts have a much wider range of models reaching more segments of the smartphone market.

Meanwhile, Huawei is in a strong position to overtake Samsung as the world’s largest smartphone maker. Huawei’s smartphone sales worldwide grew more than 50% in Q1, 2019 to 59 million devices. At the same time Samsung hipped 8% fewer phones that the same time last year.