Global smartphone sale down by 5.7% in Q3: Report
What's the story
The sale of smartphones to end users around the world totaled 366 million units in the third quarter of 2020, marking a drop of 5.7% from the same period last year, a report said on Monday.
Meanwhile, the overall global mobile phone sales to end users reached 401 million units, down by 8.7% year-over-year.
Here are more details on this.
Details
Samsung held the top position with 22% market share
Samsung held the top position with 22% market share, while Huawei grabbed the second position with 14.1% share.
Meanwhile, Xiaomi has raced ahead of Apple as the third top player for the first time ever, with sales of 44.4 million units.
Apple, on the other hand, witnessed sales of 40.5 million units in the third quarter of the year.
Details
Sales remained weak, but improved from the previous quarters
It should be noted that despite vendors introducing multiple 5G smartphones, sales continued to remain weak as compared to the same period in 2019.
"Consumers are limiting their discretionary spend even as some lockdown conditions have started to improve," said Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner.
However, sales during the third quarter were evidently better than the previous two.
Recovery
Smartphone sales have started to show signs of recovery
However, after two consecutive quarters of a decline of 20%, smartphone sales have started to show signs of recovery.
For the first time this year, smartphone sales to end users in three of the top five markets- India, Indonesia and Brazil, increased, growing by 9.3%, 8.5% and 3.3%, respectively.
"Global smartphone sales experienced moderate growth from the second quarter to third quarter," Gupta said.
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'Early signs of recovery can be seen in some markets'
"Early signs of recovery can be seen in a few markets, including parts of mature Asia/Pacific and Latin America. Near normal conditions in China improved smartphone production to fill in the supply gap in the third quarter which benefited sales to some extent," Gupta added.