Chinese phone maker Huawei recently announced that its sale of smartphones in the current year grew 64% over last year. The company has also announced that it sold as many as 2.6 million Huawei P9 and P9 Plus smartphones in the last six weeks, thereby consolidating its number 3 spot in the global smartphone market and capturing 8.5% market share in the tightly-fought space. The company has singled out select countries like China, France, Finland and Britain where Huawei P9 and P9 Plus phones have been very popular and have been purchased in large numbers. Huawei’s announcement comes at a time when a number of other Chinese phone makers like Oppo, Xiaomi and Lenovo are snapping at its heels with their premium smartphone offerings.
Announced on April 6th in London, the Huawei P9 stands out among contemporary smartphones thanks to its dual rear camera setup. The camera experience was co-engineered by German camera maker Leica and while one can capture pictures in black and white, the other one captures them in vivid colors. The Huawei P9 also arrived with the latest specifications like a 5.2-inch Full HD curved display, 3GB/ 4GB of RAM, 32GB/64GB of internal storage, a Hisilicon Kirin 955 octa-core processor, an 8-megapixel front camera and a 3,000 mAh battery. The phone also runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow as well as Huawei’s home-grown Emotion UI. The larger Huawei P9 Plus phone features a 5.5-inch Full HD display, a Hisilicon Kirin 955 processor, 64GB of internal storage, 4GB of RAM, the same dual-rear-camera setup as in the Huawei P9 and a powerful 3,400 mAh battery.
Despite their premium features and popularity, the Huawei P9 and P9 Plus are unlikely to be the company’s last flagships to be launched this year. Earlier this month, Huawei confirmed that it will launch a new smartphone in Autumn which will be compatible with Google’s Daydream VR. The phone is set to become the first smartphone, after the Google Nexus 6P, to support Daydream VR and will launch before the likes of Samsung, HTC, LG, ASUS, Xiaomi, ZTE and Alcatel devices that are to support the platform. Given that another Huawei Mate phone may also launch in the Fall of 2016, the company may close its gap on Apple by the end of the year and gain further market share in the global smartphone market in the process.
