After the successful release of its flagship P20 series, the Chinese equipment manufacturer Huawei is set to overtake Apple as the second largest global smartphone vendor in 2018. As of July, Huawei had already shipped 100 million devices, and is on track to ship a total of 200 million devices by the end of the year, notably exceeding the number of 153 million of their smartphones shipped in 2017.
Huawei, one of the world’s leading network equipment manufacturers, entered the smartphone race quite recently, and is aggressively competing with Samsung and Apple. However, the company has already managed to grow their smartphone business by 51 times since 2010, which is a sound proof of Huawei’s exponential expansion and its dominant position in the market.
In addition to being the number three smartphone manufacturer globally, Huawei also holds the top position in China and is now focused on expanding their sales in the Asian and European markets. While the visibility of Huawei’s devices in the major US market is still limited by a ban on US carriers selling these smartphones, the company has experienced rapid growth in Europe and India, driven by their branded family of low-cost devices called Honor.
With the second half of the year ahead and new models from Huawei yet to be released, including the next-generation flagship Mate, reaching the number of 200 million shipped smartphones is not unrealistic. Yet we will have to wait and see if Huawei is able to surpass the 215 million iPhone devices that Apple shipped in 2017, and become the number two smartphone manufacturer in the world.
