Counterpoint, Strategic Analytics, and many other companies have released reports that showed just how many smartphones were sold in Q4 2018. Now, the folks at Gartner have decided to release their own report which shows that despite having a bad year with Galaxy S9, Samsung is the world’s biggest smartphone manufacturer. Not just that, but the Gartner report also shows that Huawei is slowly but surely catching up to Samsung.
Smartphone Sales in 2018
The data gathered by the folks at Gartner showed that a total of 408.4 million smartphones were shipped between October 1st and December 31st. This means that the total year-on-year growth in comparison with Q4 2017 is of 0.1% which converts to 500,000 units. As we previously mentioned, Samsung is the tech company that is leading the charts with Apple and Huawei right following right after.
Samsung
Samsung sold 71 million units in Q4 2018 and it has a market share of 17.3%. Even though it might seem like Q4 2018 was great for Samsung, this isn’t the case. Samsung actually dropped 0.9% in market share when compared to the previous year. To make things even worse for Samsung, Huawei is closer than ever to surpass it in terms of sales.
Apple
Apple ranked in second place with a total of 64 million units sold. This represents a market share of 15.8% in Q4 2019 which is a 2.1 decrease in comparison with Q4 2017 and 9 million units less.
Huawei
Huawei placed third on the report provided by Gartner with a total of 60 million units in Q4 2018. This shows us that Huawei was 10 million units away from defeating Samsung becoming the world’s biggest smartphone manufacturer. The reason why Samsung needs to be scared is because Huawei is the only company that saw growth in Q4 2018.