Apple will likely beat Huawei to regain second place in global smartphone sales soon
Huawei surpassed Apple in global smartphone shipments for the first time during 2018's second quarter, and even though the Cupertino-based tech giant was ranked second overall among the world's top vendors at the end of the year, the makers of the premium Mate 20 duo and many impressive mid-rangers under its own name and the Honor brand began 2019 on a very high note.
Instead of wondering whether or not Apple could ever regain its industry silver medal placement, market researchers and analysts started looking more and more seriously at Huawei's chances of overtaking Samsung as well to become the number one smartphone vendor of the world. But then President Trump's trade war with China escalated, and all of a sudden, Huawei's very survival was threatened.
While the company will probably be able to sustain itself on domestic sales of spectacular handsets like the Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro, that's obviously not going to be enough to maintain its remarkable global growth trajectory. According to Digitimes, Apple is thus "likely to outrace Huawei to recapture second place in the global smartphone vendor ranking" by the end of the year.
Specifically, analysts at the Taiwan-based daily newspaper expect Apple to rank second in worldwide smartphone sales between October and December, which probably also means Huawei will cling on to this position when the Q3 2019 reports are released. Keep in mind that Apple actually managed to beat Huawei during Q4 2018 as well, but the latter had a massive advantage over the former in all Q2 2019 rankings published by the likes of Canalys, Strategy Analytics, and Counterpoint Research.
The gap between the two reached as much as 25 million units in IDC''s April - June estimates, but given the hit Huawei is expected to take in most Western markets and the early popularity of Apple's iPhone 11 lineup, it shouldn't come as a surprise if the gap is indeed closed this holiday season.
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