Global Smartphone Sales Plunged 20% In Q2

According to the latest figures from Gartner, global smartphone sales fell by 20.4% to 295 million units in Q2 2020, as the COVID-19 crisis continued to dampen demand.

“Travel restrictions, retail closures and more prudent spending on non-essential products during the pandemic led to the second consecutive quarterly decline in smartphone sales this year,” said Anshul Gupta, Senior Research Director at Gartner.

China was the only major market to record quarter-on-quarter growth in demand, though sales were still down year-on-year.

Samsung, which is still the top smartphone vendor, recorded the biggest drop in sales, falling by 27.1% year-on-year to 54.8 million units. Now, Samsung is virtually tied with China’s Huawei, which sold 54.1 million smartphones.

While Huawei’s smartphone sales were down 6.8% year-on-year, they did record quarter-on-quarter growth of 27.4%. This was primarily in China, where Huawei now as 42.6% of the market.

Apple’s sales remained relatively flat with a year-on-year decline of 0.4%. Apple remained in third place, with 38 million iPhones sold.

“The improved business environment in China helped Apple achieve growth in the country. In addition, the introduction of the new iPhone SE encouraged users of older phones to upgrade their smartphones,” said Annette Zimmermann, Research Vice President at Gartner.

Apple was followed by Xiaomi, which sold 26.1 million smartphones, marking a fall of 21.5%; and OPPO, with 23.6 million units sold (-15.9%).