Xiaomi Leads the Charge as Smartphone Market Recovers

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Smartphone sales finally increased Year on Year after slowing down in 2017.

The smartphone industry’s growth has been stagnating for some time now, though, at least for now the concerns can be averted. The last quarter saw the industry register a growth of 1.3% over the same time last year.

In hard figures, the quarter saw 383.5 million smartphones shipped, which was an improvement over 378.5 million phones in Q1 2017. As usual, the trifecta of Samsung, Apple and Huawei stayed true to fashion by garnering the highest share of sales.

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Breakdown

Samsung earned 20.5% of the market thanks to sales of 78.56 million, which was a slight decline from 78.78 million, as it continued to face stiff competition from Chinese rivals at low and mid-end, though, its high-end phones meant it still increased its average selling price. Apple registered a sizable growth, from 52 million to 54 million units, while Huawei also increased its share majorly, from 34.18 million to 40.42 million, thanks to a 330% increase in sales in emerging markets.

However, the big winner in the period was Xiaomi, which increased its sales from 12.7 million to a mammoth 28.5 million in the quarter, after it added further markets for product releases this past year. Xiaomi may just increase its sales further thanks to recently launched Mi 8 and Mi 8 SE.

Oppo was the only company in top-five to register a decline, of 2.75 million units to 28.173 million in the quarter.

By OS

Overall, Android continued to lead the market with 85.9% of the pie, though, it sank slightly from 86.1% thanks to Apple’s iOS. However, the market should stay more or less the same until the launch of the new iPhones, at least.