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Leading smartphone manufacturer Huawei has been having a great time of it recently, even as the company’s home market of China has been showing signs of reaching saturation. The company has already become the third largest smartphone brand globally, and is currently only behind global leaders Samsung and Apple, who continue to reign at the top of the global smartphone market. Huawei meanwhile, has already overtaken Xiaomi in the highly competitive Chinese smartphone market, but that may not be the only reason why the Chinese telecom equipment and consumer electronics major has leapfrogged other brands to become the third largest smartphone vendor worldwide, if the latest report from Kantar Worldpanel is to be believed.
The aforementioned report, released on Wednesday morning, claims that Huawei has now leapfrogged some of the established consumer electronics brands like Sony, LG, HTC and Motorola to take its pride of place as the second largest Android smartphone brand after Samsung in Europe’s five biggest markets, which include the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. That the company’s Honor sub-brand is shipping tons of handsets in China, Europe and beyond, was already reported earlier by Android Headlines. The Honor 7 is one of the more recent and popular devices from the company, and reportedly costs less than £250 in the UK. Huawei of course, is also charged with manufacturing Google’s latest flagship smartphone, the Nexus 6P, and by all means, the device has received a positive response from both the tech media as well as Android enthusiasts, once it was made official by the Mountain View, California-based internet giant late September.
Coming back to the latest Kantar Worldpanel report which gives us a glimpse into the global Q3 smartphone market dynamics, Android is said to be “gaining market share in the U.S. while losing ground in Europe’s big five markets”. According to Ms. Carolina Milanesi, chief of research at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, “Thanks to an increase in marketing focus and the weakening of brands such as Sony, HTC, and Motorola, Huawei was able to rise to second place among Android brands in Europe from sixth place in 2014. With a wider portfolio of products ranging from the high-end all the way to the low-end, Huawei made particular inroads in Spain and Italy”. The report also states that Huawei continues to remain the number one smartphone brand in China, ahead of Xiaomi and Apple.