Huawei led global smartphone shipments in Q2 2020 despite political pressure and a broad market downturn.
Research from IDC reports a 16 percent year-over-year decline in global smartphone shipments for Q2. The drop reflects a mix of factors: consumers delaying upgrades while waiting for wider 5G availability and the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Smartphone shipments suffered a huge decline in Q2 as they directly correlate to consumer spending, which had a massive reduction due to the global economic crisis and rising unemployment brought on by the widespread lockdowns,” said Nabila Popal, research director with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers.
Popal added that closures of physical retail stores—especially in regions where online shopping is less established—compounded the drop in sales. Consumers also reallocated spending to devices that supported working and learning from home, such as PCs, monitors, and tablets, leaving less budget for smartphones.
Beyond the pandemic’s effects on the whole industry and the disruption to 5G rollouts, Huawei has faced additional obstacles stemming from U.S. sanctions. Those measures restrict American companies from providing Huawei with certain software and hardware without special permission. While Huawei can use Android’s open-source components, Google’s proprietary services, including the Play Store, cannot be included on new Huawei devices.
The lack of Google services matters most for markets outside China, where Android devices rely on the Play Store. In China, Huawei and other manufacturers already use local app stores and services—such as Tencent My App and Huawei’s AppGallery—so the sanctions have had a smaller direct effect domestically. Many analysts nevertheless expect the absence of Play Store access to dampen Huawei’s appeal in Western markets.
To mitigate that risk, Huawei has actively encouraged developers to adopt its Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) and AppGallery. Those efforts have produced measurable gains: as of the first half of 2020, 1.6 million global developers support Huawei’s alternatives—an increase of 76 percent from the 910,000 figure cited last year. Additionally, around 81,000 apps tailored to Western users have been developed using HMS APIs, up by 26,000 since February.
Regionally, the steepest declines in Huawei’s shipments occurred outside China. The Asia/Pacific region excluding China and Japan saw shipments fall 31.9 percent year-over-year. Western Europe declined 14.8 percent, and the U.S. dropped 12.6 percent. China showed the weakest decline at 10.3 percent, reflecting early signs of a post-COVID recovery.
“The smartphone supply chain ground to a halt when the pandemic hit,” said Ryan Reith, VP of Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers at IDC. “However, recovery, specifically in China, has been strong.”
Despite these headwinds, Huawei sold 55.8 million smartphones in Q2, taking first place in shipments for the quarter. The overall market contraction helped Huawei reach its largest-ever global market share of 20 percent—an increase of nearly 10 percentage points year-over-year.
Samsung followed closely with 54.2 million shipments in Q2, a steep 28.9 percent decline year-over-year, leaving it with a 19.5 percent market share. Apple shipped 37.6 million iPhones in the quarter, capturing 13.5 percent of the market. Apple’s plans to introduce 5G-capable iPhones are expected to boost its shipments later in the year.
While IDC’s data positions Huawei as the clear short-term winner for Q2 2020, the company still faces a significant challenge: sustaining momentum and limiting further declines outside of China as competition, geopolitical dynamics, and consumer preferences continue to evolve.
(Photo by Alex Escu on Unsplash)