Huawei topped the list of notched smartphone shipments in the first half of 2018, data collected by market analytics firm Sigmaintell Consulting indicates. Over the first six months of the year, the Chinese technology giant shipped 25.4 million handsets with display notches, thus accounting for nearly 30-percent of all such shipments which stood at 86.1 million units. Apple followed with 20.7 million devices, with OPPO, Vivo, and Xiomi being behind the iPhone maker, in that order, according to the new study.
Notched Android handsets accounted for just over a quarter of Huawei’s device shipments over the observed period, with the Shenzhen, Guangdong-based firm delivering some 95.36 million units to retailers. While it’s presently unclear how many of those products ended up being sold, the data is in line with a late July report from IDC that claimed Huawei overtook Apple by smartphone shipments in the second quarter of the year, thus coming one step closer to its goal of becoming the world’s largest handset manufacturer. The firm is still far behind Samsung and currently accounts for 14.9-percent of global smartphone shipments, as per the same source.
The mobile market as a whole continues to decline, with first-half shipments hitting 604 million units, 3.3-percent down annually. Huawei and other Chinese manufacturers experienced an even stronger performance drop, shipping 210 million devices over the observed period, a 6.9-percent year-over-year decrease. A lack of major tech innovations and the fact that consumers now deem non-flagship devices good enough to be held on to for longer have been highlighted as some of the main reasons for the trend by several industry trackers. Huawei and its subsidiary Honor already captured a significant portion of the global entry-level and mid-range segments, with the electronics juggernaut now pushing into the premium smartphone category as well. The P20 lineup of Android flagships is presently touted as one of the best handset series ever created, offering high-end AI and photography capabilities, as well as significant raw processing power, with its sales already breaking Huawei’s internal records.