Upsetting the Apple cart

Huawei has overtaken the iphone maker in the smartphone stakes and has eyes on Samsung’s No 1 spot

Most people only know Chinese telecoms giant Huawei because of its smartphones. The company last month overtook Apple to become the second-biggest smartphone maker globally and locally.

It’s deserved. Huawei only started making Android smartphones in 2009; it now makes superb devices with luxurious materials, excellent screens and superb cameras.

Huawei connects about a third of the world’s mobile users to the internet. In SA, it provides more than 50% of telecoms equipment and solutions. It provides about 70% of our population with a way to get online, according to its figures. Those handy cellular modems we plug into our laptops, or the clever Mifi hotspots that have replaced them, are made by Huawei.

But the firm has always aspired to be smartphone royalty. The Huawei Ascend P7 was, at the time of its launch in 2013, the world’s slimmest smartphone, at 6.18mm. At its London launch, Carphone Warehouse founder and chair Sir Charles Dunstone described Huawei as “the most fantastic partner” and “the most extraordinary engineering organisation”.

Huawei has worked its way up the value chain, making increasingly better smartphones. This year’s flagship P20 Pro is the top smartphone with the best camera, according to a recent test by Stuff magazine. It beat Samsung, which has perennially produced the best pictures.

Huawei is particularly proud of this month’s achievement. It’s worked hard to overtake Apple. And that’s no mean feat.

Apple last month became the first listed company to be valued at $1 trillion. It virtually created the smartphone market with the iphone in 2007; and its $1,000 iphone X was the bestselling smartphone in the first quarter, according to Strategy Analytics.

Huawei’s market share has reached 15%, a year-on-year increase of 41% from the 38.4 million smartphones shipped in the second quarter of 2017 to a “record” 54.2 million this year, the research firm says. This was in part because its “midrange Android models, Nova 2s and Nova 3e, are … wildly popular across Asia and Europe”.

Samsung retains top spot, with 20.4% market share (down from 22.1% year on year), and Apple has 11.8%.

Even though global shipments have slowed as people hold onto their phones for longer, Huawei’s ascent to become global No 2 is a sign of the rising strength of the Chinese smartphone makers, with Xiaomi (9%) and Oppo (8.6%) closing out the top five.

“Samsung is being squeezed by Chinese rivals, like Xiaomi and Huawei, across major Asian markets such as China and India,” Strategy Analytics says.

There may be concerns about the lack of hardware innovation (the P20 Pro looks like the iphone X, screen notch and all) and other factors pressuring the smartphone market, but let’s give Huawei its due for becoming a major phone player.

Huawei provides about 70% of our population with a way to get online