Huawei Slides Past Apple To Take Second Place In Global Smartphone Market Share

According to Gartner's analysis, Huawei smartphone sales jumped nearly 39 percent during the Q2. Huawei was able to sell 49.8 million units garnering a 13.3 percent share of the global market in Q2. Apple sold 44.7 million iPhones, taking a 11.9 percent share. However, both OEMs were far outpaced by Samsung, which sold a staggering 72.3 million smartphones, giving it a 19.3 percent share of the market.

We should mention, however, that Samsung's numbers are down compared to the same quarter last year (82.5 million, 22.6 percent share) primarily due to the gains from Huawei and Xiaomi, which are both powerhouse Chinese OEMs.

"Samsung faces slowing global smartphone demand and ever-growing competition from Chinese manufacturers," said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner. "The slowing demand for its flagship smartphones left Samsung with lower profitability. It now expects the Note 9 smartphone to revive growth."

While the iPhone X remains the best-selling Apple smartphone (despite its $999 starting price), Gartner says that sales have cooled off somewhat since its initial launch. In fact, Gartner says that the iPhone X sales drop-off has occurred faster than previous generation iPhones. However, Apple has a chance to turn things around with the launch of its 2018 iPhone family. It's expected that the 6.1-inch LCD iPhone will be valued-priced (for an iPhone) and that sales from the three combined next-generation iPhones will represent the biggest upgrade cycle for Apple since the iPhone 6/iPhone 6 Plus launched in 2014.

OEMs like Huawei and Xiaomi have been able to make a name for themselves in the smartphone market with a combination of good performance, stylish looks, plentiful features and value pricing compared to established competitors.

In other news, Gartner says that Android is by far the most dominant smartphone operating system with an 88 percent global share compared to 11.9 percent for iOS.