Huawei sales surge, with Apple experiencing a big drop.

Over the past month, IDC, Counterpoint and Strategic Analytics have released all of their 2018 smartphone sales estimates, and today is Gartner's turn, which is generally rather pessimistic for the fourth quarter.

ΣAccording to the data collected, a total of 408,4 million smartphones were sold between October 1 and December 31. This represents an annual increase of just 0,1% or 500.000 units. The best-selling companies throughout the season were Samsung, Apple and Huawei, followed by Oppo and Xiaomi. It is interesting, however, that only two of these companies experienced growth.

Samsung maintained the first place in the ranking with shipments of approximately 71 million units and a market share of 17,3%. While the number is impressive, it represents a drop of more than 3 million units and a drop in market share of 0,9%. But perhaps more worrying for Samsung is the fact that Huawei is following it very closely.

Huawei ranked third overall with shipments of 60 million units for the quarter. To put it another way, Huawei was just 10 million units behind Samsung and 4 million units behind Apple. The new measurements also represent a huge increase of 17 million units compared to the fourth quarter of 2017. As a result, Huawei's market share increased from 4% to 14,8% during the period.

As mentioned above, Apple landed somewhat abnormally in second place with 64 million units according to the Gartner report. But that number should not excite her at all, as it is indicative of a huge drop of almost 9 million units compared to last year, and is the worst drop in Apple iPhone sales since the first quarter of 2016.

Analyzing the results above, total smartphone sales are expected to remain quite stagnant. But if Huawei continues its current growth rate, it could surpass both Samsung and Apple by the end of the year to become the largest smartphone maker in the world. The only thing that might stop it, is the potentially strong sales from the renewed line of Samsung devices, which now includes the new flagships of the Galaxy S10.

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