South Korea-based Samsung, and Chinese vendors Huawei and Oppo increased their respective slices of the global smartphone market in Q3, boosted by offerings of entry-level and mid-range devices, data from Gartner showed.

Samsung remained the global market leader, with sales to end-users up 7.8 per cent year-on-year to 79.1 million units, boosted by what Gartner senior research director Anshul Gupta branded an “aggressive revamp” of its portfolio.

Huawei was the only top-five vendor to register double-digit growth, with 65.8 million units sold, up 26 per cent. The results were mainly driven by its performance in China, where it sold 40.5 million smartphones, which Gartner attributed to a rallying of local partners following a US trade ban, along with the vendor’s investment in sub-brands Honor and Nova, 5G development, and multichannel operations.

Oppo’s sales increased marginally from 30.6 million units in Q3 2018 to 30.8 million.

Apple and Xiaomi lost ground: the former’s sales fell 10.7 per cent to 40.8 million units, and Xiaomi’s numbers declined by 1 million to 32.2 million.

“In the Greater China market sales of iPhones continued to improve, however, it follows a double-digit decline recorded at the beginning of the year. The iPhone 11, 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max saw good initial adoption, which suggests that sales may be positive in the remaining quarter”, Gupta stated.

Overall
Gartner noted a continued drop in global smartphone sales, down 0.4 per cent to 387.5 million.

“Today’s smartphone user is opting for mid-tier smartphones over premium-tier ones because they offer better value for money. In addition, while waiting for 5G network coverage to increase to more countries, smartphone users are delaying their purchase decisions until 2020”, Gupta explained.