Customers in a Huawei-licensed experience store will purchase devices on October 30, 2020 in Suzhou, China.
Fred Lee | Getty Images News | Getty Images
GUANGZHOU, China – Huawei’s smartphone shipments have continued to decline due to US sanctions, tumbling the once number 1 supplier in the world from rivals like Apple.
The Chinese tech giant shipped 33 million smartphones worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2020, down 41% year-on-year, bringing its market share to 8%, according to data released by Counterpoint Research on Thursday.
That made Huawei the sixth largest smartphone maker in the December quarter, behind Chinese rivals like Oppo and Vivo and well behind Apple and Samsung.
Data released by Canalys on Thursday shows that Huawei shipped 32 million smartphones in the fourth quarter, almost 43% less than last year. It is the first time that Huawei has disappeared from the top five in six years, Canalys said.
“Huawei has declined dramatically in most markets as a result of US sanctions,” Amber Liu, an analyst at Canalys Research, said in a report.
The latest figures mark a sharp decline for Huawei from the second quarter of 2020, when it was number 1 in the world in shipments.
Huawei was the third largest in terms of smartphone shipments throughout 2020, according to the research firms. Huawei responded to the latest figures and took its third place.
“Huawei has always been committed to innovation and committed to creating more value for consumers with better products. Over the past year, our smartphone business has grown strongly and tablets, PCs and wearables have grown significantly. the future. ”the company said in a statement.
Huawei’s woes come when Apple shipped 90.1 million phones in the fourth quarter, the largest number ever shipped by a vendor in smartphone history, according to IDC. Apple also posted a record quarter of sales in China.
Indeed, US sanctions are taking their toll on Huawei’s smartphone business. In 2019, Huawei was placed on a US blacklist called the Entity List, which prohibited US companies from exporting important components and software to the company.
The biggest effect of that was cutting Huawei off from Google’s Android operating system. That’s not a problem in China, where Google services like Gmail and search are blocked. But in the international markets, it has been key to Huawei’s growth as consumers are used to these services.