Η Market research firm Counterpoint yesterday released a report on global smartphone shipments for the third quarter of 2018. According to the report, global smartphone shipments fell by 3% year-on-year in the third quarter of 2018, with sales to reach the number of 386,8 million units.
For the third quarter of 2018, Samsung is still the largest smartphone maker in the global market, which sold a total of 72,3 million devices, with its share being reduced by 13% compared to the same period last year. At the same time, Huawei shipped 52 million devices, ranking second, an increase of 33% year on year. As a result, Apple fell to third place, but kept its share at the same level as in the same quarter last year. The second largest increase in the top five of the Counterpoint list belongs to Xiaomi. Shipments of 35,7 million devices show an increase of 25% on an annual basis, ranking the company in fourth place.
But among the top 10 manufacturers globally, HMD (Nokia) had the biggest growth, achieving a 71% increase, while Lenovo (including Moto) and LG both saw double-digit declines. Lenovo phone shipments fell 26% to 11,3 million units, compared to the same period last year. And LG recorded a similar drop, by 25%, with its sales not exceeding 10,4 million devices. As for the rest of the top ten, OPPO and Vivo saw a slight increase in shipments compared to the corresponding period last year by 4% and 7% respectively. In 10th place was Tecno (unknown in our parts), with a sales increase of 11%.
As for the Chinese market, Counterpoint reveals that only Huawei, the Vivo and OPPO saw no drop in shipments during the third quarter of 2018. Xiaomi's domestic shipments fell by 16%, Apple's fell by 17%, and Samsung's saw a strong 67% decline.
More specifically, although Xiaomi's domestic shipments decreased by 16% in the third quarter of 2018, sales in foreign markets increased by 83%. As a result, Xiaomi has continued to grow in the global market. During the same period, Huawei increased its shipments to international (excluding China) markets by 60%.
In the domestic sales of the world's largest market, China, the first in order of ranking are Huawei, the Vivo, OPPO, Xiaomi, Apple and Samsung. However, total shipments also fell by 8% there.
