The overall smartphone market in the world is down this year due to the coronavirus outbreak. However, Samsung managed to snatch the biggest market share in the first quarter of 2020 of European smartphone market.
With the recent resurfacing dispute between US and China, Huwaei market has declined significantly. On the contrary, Xiaomi has made rapid progress,
According to Counterpoint Research, Samsung Electronics ranked first with a 29% share in the first quarter. Despite the collapse of the 30 percent market share, the company maintained its lead by maintaining a certain gap with No. 2 Apple (22 percent).
In addition, the fact that there were no problems in supplying Samsung Electronics products, unlike other Chinese companies.
Samsung leads the European smartphone market, Apple, Huawei and Xiaomi follow
By major countries, Samsung Electronics topped Apple in all major Western European countries. Including Germany (35%), France (34%) and Italy (39%). However, in the U.K., where iPhone shares are high, Apple ranked second (23 percent) behind Apple (49 percent).
Apple, which ranked second, maintained its market share of more than 20% due to continued strong sales of the iPhone 11 series. Which was released in the second half of last year, although it suffered from a supply shortage in some markets. It overtook Huawei for third place.
Huawei saw its sales drop 43 percent year-on-year due to continued U.S. sanctions. Due to the U.S. sanctions, Huawei was not able to apply Google Mobile Service (GMS) apps such as Gmail and Play Store to its new products that will be released after the second half of last year. In which it directly hit the European market. Its market share also dropped from 23 percent last year to 16 percent this year.
On the other hand, despite the trend of shrinking smartphone markets with COVID 19, Xiaomi continued to grow in Europe. Xiaomi’s sales in the first quarter of this year increased 145 percent year-on-year, with its share also rising from 4 percent to 11 percent over the same period. Amid Huawei’s contraction, other Chinese smartphone makers such as Xiaomi and Oppo seem to have benefited from the decline.
Meanwhile, the European smartphone market shrank 7 percent on-year in the first quarter and 23 percent on-quarter in the wake of COVID 19. In particular, the decline in Western Europe was even greater. Italy, hit directly by COVID 19, saw its market shrink 21 percent, while Britain, Germany and France saw their market shrink more than 5 percent year-on-year.
