Motorola shines bright amid global phone market slump

Motorola, in particular, rode on the wave of the LG departures from the phone market and its sales were nearly 20% higher than last year, pushing it to the 8th place globally behind Samsung, Apple, and the Chinese brands.

Actually, the decline in the global phone market sales was mainly due to the drastic slump of sales split among the world's 4rd largest handset maker Xiaomi and the BBK Holding brands of Oppo, OnePlus, Realme, and Vivo.

If we combine the sales of all those brands, BBK is actually the world's largest phone maker at the moment despite the sales dive, displacing the top dog Samsung by a few million. Samsung did well, riding high on its own Galaxy S22 Ultra supply and even cancelled the expected Galaxy S22 FE release to save parts for the production of the red-hot Ultra.

According to Jusy Hong, Senior Research Manager at Omdia, "the increase in Samsung's shipments is thanks to strong sales of low-end models, such as the Galaxy A13, and its flagship Galaxy S22 series. There were also no special issues in production and parts supply this year, unlike the significant decrease in shipments due to the lack of components supply and the lockdown of major production bases during the pandemic in the second quarter of last year."

Apple did well year-on-year, notching 13% increase in shipments, but its Q2 performance compared to the beginning of the year was as dismal as Samsung's. Huawei, on the other hand, managed to find its way amidst the Android deprivation controversy and shipped 14% more handsets on a quarterly basis, while its former subrand Honor which is now independent showed the largest increase in sales among major phone brands, ballooning them 125% compared to last year's doldrums.