| Apple sees biggest quarterly decline since Q16
| Huawei narrows the gap with Apple with Honor series
| Samsung, Chinese-Western Europe-South America Market Share Declines

Huawei, which has been facing difficult business conditions day after day due to external negative factors, has emerged as the company with the best performance in the smartphone market in 2018.
On the 21st, Gartner announced global smartphone sales for the fourth quarter of 2018.

According to the announcement, end-user smartphone sales in the fourth quarter of 2018 slowed to 408.4 million units, down 0.1% year-over-year. Apple’s sales fell 11.8%, its worst quarterly decline since the first quarter of 2016.

“Demand for entry-level and mid-priced smartphones remained strong across markets in the fourth quarter of 2018, while demand for high-end smartphones continued to slow,” said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner. “Minor innovation and price increases in high-end smartphones appear to have dampened users’ replacement decisions.” This resulted in market growth remaining stagnant in the fourth quarter of 2018.
Apple's iPhone sales in the fourth quarter of 2018 were 64.5 million units, down 11.8% year-over-year. Apple recorded a double-digit decline, the worst performance among the top five global smartphone makers.

Demand for iPhones declined in most regions outside of North America and the more mature Asia-Pacific region. Apple’s sales fell the most in Greater China. Apple’s market share in Greater China fell from 14.6% in the fourth quarter of 2017 to 8.8% in the fourth quarter of 2018. Total iPhone sales in 2018 fell 2.7% to 209 million units.

“Apple is struggling with consumers holding off on buying a more innovative smartphone, while Chinese companies continue to introduce powerful high-end and mid-priced smartphones that can replace the iPhone,” Gupta said. He went on to analyze that this double whammy is limiting Apple’s unit sales growth prospects.

In the high-end segment, Samsung’s Galaxy S9, S9+, and Note 9 struggled to drive growth in Q4 2018. In the mid- to low-end segment, Xiaomi and Huawei continued to gain market share. As a result, Samsung’s smartphone sales fell 4.4% in Q4 2018. In particular, Samsung's overall smartphone sales in 2018 fell 8.2%, as its market share declined in Greater China, Western Europe, and South America.

“Samsung is strengthening its low- to mid-tier smartphone product line, but it is facing fierce competition from Chinese brands that are increasingly entering the market. It is also struggling to innovate its high-end smartphones,” said Gupta. To counter the aggressive moves by Chinese companies in emerging markets, Samsung is launching a new low- to mid-tier M series smartphone line in the first quarter of this year and expanding its online sales channel.

In the fourth quarter of 2018, Huawei sold over 60 million smartphones, posting the most impressive quarterly growth of 37.6% among the top five global smartphone vendors. Huawei continued to grow throughout 2018, narrowing the gap with Apple.

“Huawei continues to expand its investments in Asia Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East beyond its strong presence in China and Europe to drive further growth,” said Gupta. “Huawei capitalized on the expansion of its Honor series in emerging markets in the second quarter of 2018 as a growth opportunity, which helped Huawei increase its market share to 13.0% in 2018.”
Global smartphone sales to end users reached 1.6 billion units in 2018, up 1.2 percent from the previous year. Along with North America, the Asia-Pacific and Greater China regions, which have highly mature markets, showed the worst declines, with 6.8%, 3.4%, and 3.0%, respectively.

“Demand for smartphones in mature markets is largely driven by the appeal of flagship smartphones from the top three brands — Samsung, Apple and Huawei — and in 2018, all but Huawei recorded declines,” said Gupta.