Chinese smartphone market, Xiaomi is growing at a rapid pace as the company has shipped a total of 28 million smartphones globally, registering a growth of 87.8% YoY. According to the preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, smartphone vendors shipped a total of 334.3 million units during the first quarter of 2018 (Q1 2018), resulting in a 2.9% decline when compared to the 344.4 million units shipped in the first quarter of 2017. Notably, the dip in shipments was because of the Chinese market as manufacturers shipped less than 100 million smartphones in the quarter, which hasn't happened since Q3 2013. Samsung remained the market leader, followed by Apple, Huawei and Xiaomi. Oppo slipped to fifth owning to the competition it's facing outside the Chinese market.
Samsung's overall shipments in Q1 2018 stood at 78.2 million which is down from the 80.1 million smartphones it shipped in the first quarter of 2017. Even though facing a dip in the shipments, Samsung grabbed a market share of 23.4%, experiencing a 2.4% decline from Q1 2017. The new Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9+ led the way as the new flagships launched a quarter early for the Korean giant compared to last year’s S8/S8+.
Apple, yesterday said that it shipped 52.2 million iPhones during the quarter, which resulted in a modest 2.8% YoY increase from the 50.8 million units shipped last year. Despite rumours of an underperforming iPhone X in the quarter, Apple stated that the iPhone X was the most popular model each week in the March quarter.
Huawei, which is going strong across the globe climbed to a new market share of 11.8% even as it remained in third overall. Huawei shipped 39.3 million smartphones in the quarter, up by 13.8% YoY. Huawei' sub-brand Honor entered into the top five Indian smartphone brands in the last quarter with close to 4% market share.
Xiaomi, on the other hand, is growing very hard in the markets outside China. In India, Xiaomi is continuing its retail expansion, but still, the company is receiving a huge number of smartphone sales from the online market. In India, Xiaomi secured a market share of 31% and also making massive commitments to the 'Make in India' campaign. Xiaomi also recently announced PCB assembly in India, becoming the second vendor after Samsung to do so.
Lastly, we have Oppo Electronics, which slipped to the fifth position with its YoY decline of 7.5%, which is largely due to the slowdown of shipments in the Chinese market as IDC reports share and shipment volumes abroad increased in the first quarter.
