Huawei overtakes Microsoft to become 3rd largest phone vendor

Microsoft’s 6 percent global mobile phone share is sitting near an all-time low.

This means that Huawei has overtaken Microsoft for third place in the list. Huawei, according to the study, came close to 50% year-on-year sales growth thanks to a more global market focus, while Xiaomi grew by less than 33%, due to a greater emphasis on the Asian market.

In early March, a report from Digits revealed that, according to research firm IDC, Huawei’s smartphone sales increased by 54 percent last year to around 74 million devices, which allowed the company to gain 5.7 percent of the market, a far cry from the 4.8 percent market share it earned in 2013.

Woody Oh, Director at Strategy Analytics, said, “Global mobile phone shipments grew a lackluster 2 percent annually from 428.0 million units in Q2 2014 to 434.6 million in Q2 2015″. And the 30.6 million handsets that Huawei shipped during the quarter puts it well on track to top its internal goal of moving 100 million phones this year. Microsoft will roll out Windows 10 to its mobile phones sometime later this year, hoping the new OS may revive sales.

“Xiaomi has good distribution channels and competitive pricing in its large home market of China, enabling it to stay in front of Lenovo-Motorola, (which) is struggling with the transition from 3G to 4G smartphones in China and the U.S.”, Oh said. “Huawei is expanding rapidly across Asia, Europe and North America, putting competitive pressure on key rivals such as Samsung, Xiaomi, Lenovo, LG, Sony and Alcatel”. Samsung’s shipments fell 7% to 89m, taking 20% of the market, while Apple’s iPhone 6 and 6 Plus continued to perform strongly, with sales up 35% to 47.5m and an 11% share. Xiaomi shipped 19.8 million mobile phones and captured 5 percent marketshare worldwide in Q2 2015. In the high end of the market, Samsung underestimated demand for its popular Galaxy S6 Edge model, Strategy Analytics said.

Exhibit 1: Global Mobile Phone Vendor Shipments and Market Share in Q2 2015 [1].

Update: Strategy Analytics released a second report, on smartphones specifically.

Juniper Research provides research and analytical services to the global hi-tech communications sector, providing consultancy, analyst reports and industry commentary. The company is headquartered in Boston, USA, with offices in the UK, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India and China.

[1] Numbers are rounded.

Microsoft has been feeling pain in the mobile phone market.