Huawei now sells more smartphones globally than Samsung, Apple and Xiaomi even without Google

People seem to continue to purchase Huawei smartphones undeterred by the lack of Google apps and services. According to the latest data published by Counterpoint Research, the Chinese company continues to expand its global smartphone market share. As the graph below demonstrates, Huawei has been battling with Apple for second place in global smartphone market share for the last two years, with Huawei outselling Apple in six of the last eight quarters. However, Samsung has remained between 3% and 11% ahead of Huawei during this period and well beyond the sales of other competitors like Oppo, Realme, vivo and Xiaomi.

However, Samsung's global smartphone market share dipped to 17% in April according to Counterpoint, while Huawei's increased to 19%. It is worth keeping in mind that global smartphone sales declined 13% YoY in Q1 2020, likely because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, it is the first time that Huawei can claim that it has the largest share of the global smartphone market, even if those figures include the sales of Honor smartphones.

So, it would seem that people may not be that concerned by using Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) instead of Google's equivalents. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to whether Huawei's market share is affected by the extension of the US' ban. TSMC is said to be refusing any new Kirin SoC orders. Supply of TSMC-manufactured Kirin orders will terminate in September, but it would be naive to assume that Huawei does not have a contingency in place.