Global smartphone sales fell 5.7% in Q3 2020: Gartner report

Global sales of smartphones decreased 5.7% in the third quarter of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. Global sales of smartphones amounted to 366 million units in the last quarter.

Global sales of mobile phones to end users totaled 401 million units, down 8.7% year-over-year, according to a new report from Gartner.

While this may sound like bad news, it is actually an improvement over the first and second quarters of pandemic-prone 2020, and the report says after two consecutive quarters of a 20% decline , quarterly smartphone sales have started to show signs of recovery sequentially. However, smartphone sales remain low compared to 3Q 2019, even with vendors introducing multiple 5G smartphones and governments relaxing shelter-in-place instructions in some geographies.

When it comes to market share, Samsung ranks first with 22% market share. The company sold 80,816 million units of smartphones, which represented a 22% market share in 3Q 2020. Interestingly, the company grew by 2.2% having sold 70,056.7 million. smartphone units and 20.3% market share in Q3 2019.

The second place was occupied by Huawei selling 51,830.9 million units of smartphones, which represented a market share of 14.1% in the last quarter. The company recorded a decrease of 21.3% compared to the third quarter of 2020.

Xiaomi, on the other hand, moved past Apple for the first time to third position with sales of 44.4 million units compared to Apple’s sales of 40.5 million units in the third quarter of 2020. While Xiaomi captured 12.1% of the market, Apple’s share stood at 11.1%. Interestingly, while Xiaomi’s sales improved 34.9%, Apple’s sales were down 0.6% from Q3 2020.

The slight decrease was mainly due to the delay in delivery by Apple of its new generation of iPhone 2020, which in previous years would always start in mid / late September. This year, the launch event and the start of the expedition began 4 weeks later than usual, said Annette Zimmermann, vice president of research at Gartner in a statement.

The fifth position was occupied by Oppo by selling 29,890.4 million units of smartphones, which represented a market share of 8.2%. It was down 2.3% from the same period last year.