2019 has been a challenging year for Huawei especially with the ongoing ban by the U.S. government. Although it can’t introduce new brand smartphones with Google apps and services, the Chinese smartphone giant appears to be on track to ship more smartphones this year compared to 2018.
According to a report by Tencent Technology, Huawei CEO for Consumer Business, Richard Yu, had shared that Huawei’s global smartphone shipments are expected to hit around 230 million units this year. That’s 12% more than 2018 where it shipped 206 million phones worldwide.
It was worth pointing out that global shipments for Huawei smartphones in 2019 have exceeded 200 million units, 64 days earlier than in 2018. That’s impressive considering Huawei had launched the Mate 30 flagship series without Google Mobile Services and they still managed maintained its #2 position globally.
According to the latest IDC’s quarterly mobile phone tracker, Huawei has shipped 66.6 million smartphones in Q3 2019 with an impressive 28.2% growth year on year. As a comparison, Samsung had posted an 8.3% growth for the same quarter while Apple and Xiaomi have shown a decline of 0.6% and 3.3% respectively. During the challenging times, Huawei has shifted its focus to its domestic market especially in the lower-tier Chinese cities. The lack of GMS has no effect on their local market since Google and most popular American platforms are blocked in China.
Internationally, Huawei is still pushing its P30 series which still has access to Google Mobile Services and it runs on the latest Android 10. On top of that, the Chinese smartphone maker continues to release new “rehashed” smartphone models that still offer Google apps pre-installed such as the Honor 9X and Huawei Y9 series.
Although Huawei is still enjoying growth from its sales in China, it will be interesting to see how the Chinese smartphone maker will persevere in the global market as it focuses on Huawei Mobile Services. Huawei is expected to release its P40 series in March next year and it is very likely to ship with Google Mobile Services pre-installed.
