TAIPEI: Huawei has snatched third place in the smartphone market in the first quarter of 2015 with 7 per cent of the total smartphone sales during that time period.
Lenovo is the big factor leading to Huawei’s success, dropping from 7.1 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2014 to 6 per cent this quarter. LG and Samsung both showed progress this quarter moving from 5.3 to 6.2 per cent and 24.7 to 27.8 per cent, respectively.
After the stellar performance last quarter by Apple with 23.2 per cent of all smartphone sales, it has dropped to 19.9 per cent this quarter. Still admirable numbers considering the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are the only big sellers for Apple, compared to Samsung’s war chamber of smartphones currently on sale in hundreds of countries.
Even though Huawei has reached third place, we cannot see them holding it for longer than a few months, unless the Huawei P8 turns out to be a huge device in the East. The Chinese based company is always around the top five spot, but currently Xiaomi and Lenovo lead in China and are starting to catch up in other South-East Asian countries.
Unless Huawei starts to see real sales in the West, it might drop out of the top five. Samsung is starting to show success with the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, alongside Lenovo adding Motorola into its portfolio. LG’s planned G4 event later this month should also bring its own sales higher in the second quarter this year.
Xiaomi has an event planned in New Delhi later this month as well, launching a new smartphone called ‘i’. We still don’t know any specifics, but if Xiaomi manages to win over the Indian smartphone market it could be yet another massive market for the Chinese vendor.
Huawei doesn’t necessarily need to invest heavily into mobile devices, considering it makes three times the revenue in the networking market. In that sense, even if it drops out of the top five it will be selling networking equipment to governments and manufacturers, adding more revenue to its other division.
