Xiaomi sold more smartphones than Apple last quarter
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Xiaomi overtook Apple in Q3 2020 to become the world’s third-largest smartphone vendor in terms of smartphone sales.
This is according to Gartner, whose data shows that Xiaomi sold 44.4 million smartphones last quarter compared to the 40.6 million sold by Apple over the same period.
iPhone sales decreased by 0.6% compared to last year, while Xiaomi increased its sales by 34.9% year-on-year.
Apple’s decline was attributed to delayed shipments of its new iPhone range by Gartner research VP Annette Zimmermann.
“The slight decrease was mainly due to Apple’s delayed shipment start of its new 2020 iPhone generation, which in previous years would always start mid/end September,” said Zimmermann.
“This year, the launch event and shipment start began four weeks later than usual.”
Huawei has remained the second-largest smartphone vendor in the world, but saw a 21.3% decrease year on year, while Samsung increased its sales by 2.2% over the same period.
“Consumers are limiting their discretionary spend even as some lockdown conditions have started to improve,” said senior research director at Gartner Anshul Gupta.
Market is stabilising
However, Gupta noted that global smartphone sales experienced moderate growth from the second quarter of 2020 to the third quarter of the year.
“This was due to pent-up demand from previous quarters,” Gupta explained.
Gupta also noted that certain markets have shown early signs of recovery – including “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,” said Gupta.
“For the first time this year, smartphone sales to end users in three of the top five markets i.e., India, Indonesia and Brazil increased, growing 9.3%, 8.5%, and 3.3%, respectively.”
Gartner’s smartphone sales figures for Q3 2020 are detailed below.
| Quarterly smartphone sales | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Smartphone vendor | Q3 2019 sales | Q3 2020 sales | Growth |
| Samsung | 79,056,700 | 80,816,000 | 2.2% |
| Huawei | 65,822,000 | 51,830,900 | -21.3% |
| Xiaomi | 32,927,900 | 44,405,400 | 34.9% |
| Apple | 40,833,000 | 40,598,400 | -0.6% |
| Oppo | 30,581,400 | 29,890,400 | -2.3% |
| Others | 139,586,700 | 119,117,400 | -14.7% |
| Total | 388,807,700 | 366,658,600 | -5.7%% |
