This article is copied from Lei Feng.com. The original link is:
In 2018, the global smartphone market experienced a round of upheaval. Apple, Samsung and other major international manufacturers were in a state of stagnating or even declining shipments, while domestic brands such as Huawei and Xiaomi countered the trend by virtue of product innovation and international development. Among them, Huawei's momentum is even more fierce. It has surpassed Apple in terms of shipments and has steadily ranked second in the world.
Now, Huawei has set its sights on being the first in the world.
Historical Inevitability in Yucheng Dongkou
In April 2018, in an interview after Huawei's flagship P20 series launch conference in the first half of the year, Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business, said that only two or three mobile phone manufacturers in the world would be left, including Huawei, and that it would be possible to become the second largest in the global market by the end of the next year.
The first place in the world will not be mentioned first, but the event of becoming the second place in the world did not happen as expected by Yu Chengdong and was ahead of schedule.
On July 31, 2018, IDC, a world-famous data research organization, released the data of global smartphone shipments in the second quarter of 2018. Huawei surpassed Apple for the first time, winning the second place in global smartphone shipments with 5420 shipments and a year-on-year growth rate of 40.9%.
On August 3, 2018, Yu Chengdong announced the detailed performance data of Huawei's consumer business department in Shenzhen in the first half of the year, saying that Huawei's global mobile phone shipments reached more than 95 million units in the first half of the year, and again stressed that it is inevitable that Huawei's market share will become the first in the world, and its future goal is to be the first in sales, Sales revenue is also the first.
At this time, Huawei has already stood in the second place in the world and positioned its next goal as the world's largest smartphone manufacturer.
On November 1, 2018, IDC released the global smartphone shipment report for the third quarter of 2018. The report shows that Huawei once again ranked second in the world with 46.9 million smartphones shipped and a year-on-year growth rate of 32.9% when the global smartphone sales dropped by 6%.
It seems that Huawei has basically become the second largest company in the world.
Surpass Apple and catch up with Samsung
At least since the first quarter of 2017, Samsung, Apple and Huawei have been the top three players in the global smartphone market. In fact, Huawei's competitors are only Samsung and Apple.
Samsung, with its strong product, technology and channel advantages, has always had a high sales volume. Among them, Q4 in 2017 was briefly surpassed by Apple. However, although Samsung is still the undisputed leader, it has shown a downward trend in its share.
According to Lei Feng.com, Samsung's smartphone shipment data has declined for four consecutive quarters, 4.4% respectively, in the data released by IDC（ 2017 Q4 ），2.4%（ 2018 Q1 ），10.4%（ 2018 Q2 ），13.4%（ 2018 Q3 ）, especially in the past two quarters, the percentage of decline has exceeded 10%, and is growing.
According to IDC, the problem Samsung is facing is that it is losing its share in the low-end smartphone market, especially in markets such as India and Indonesia, where Samsung is losing its long-term leading position, and these markets are just being eroded by Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and other markets.
Apple is undoubtedly a strong competitor, but based on its high-end positioning and increasingly high product pricing trend, its potential market is close to saturation. Lei Feng.com (official account: Lei Feng.com) observed the sales growth of iPhone in the past ten quarters and found that in the past ten quarters, the year-on-year growth rate of iPhone was up to 5%（ 2017Q1 ）In the past seven quarters, the growth rate of iPhone sales has fluctuated by no more than 3%（ There is even a downward trend ）In the third quarter of 2018, it was almost 0.
Therefore, Lei Feng.com believes that in terms of sales volume, iPhone has achieved the initial coverage of many target user groups around the world, and is almost unable to achieve a sustained and substantial increase in shipments. Of course, Apple is also actively exploring other key emerging markets, such as India, Brazil, Turkey and Russia; But in fact, Apple's sales in the Indian market did not change, while in the Brazilian market there was a reverse result that he did not expect - a decline.
In fact, in the latest financial report release, Apple has announced that it will stop disclosing the sales figures of iPhone/iPad/Mac in the financial report, and Lei Feng also believes that Apple's next business focus is no longer to continue to improve the user coverage of iPhone, but to explore the value of users on the basis of existing user coverage, This includes increasing the price of hardware through investment in technological innovation, and increasing the income of the Internet and services.
However, considering the quarterly periodicity of Apple's iPhone shipments, in Q4 2018, Apple may gain a certain increase in shipments by virtue of the latest iPhone XS/Max, iPhone XR and other new products. If Huawei in Q4 still ranks above Apple, it can basically be considered that, at least in terms of shipments, Apple no longer has the conditions to compete with Huawei for the second place.
In other words, Huawei's real rival may be only Samsung.
The development trend of Huawei's two major brands
In April 2018, when Yu Chengdong put forward the heroic statement that "Huawei's market share is the first in the world because of historical development", he also soberly said that although Apple's sales have been surpassed, its sales are still the first, the proportion of high-end computers is high, and it has the advantages of the ecosystem. In essence, Huawei's surpassing Apple in terms of shipments is not a big story, not to mention a giant rival like Samsung.
However, Huawei has no doubt coveted the No. 1 position in the world for a long time. Although Yu Chengdong's "historical necessity" sounds a little bit loud, it is no longer a free speech.
From Q3 in 2017 to Q3 in 2018, Huawei's market share climbed from 10.5%. In Q2 in 2018, Huawei leapt over Apple to 15.9%, and Q3 slightly dropped to 14.6%; At the same time, the gap between Huawei and Samsung in market rate also narrowed from 10.7% in Q3 in 2017 to 5.7% in Q3 in 2018.
In terms of shipment volume, the gap between Huawei and Samsung was 44.2 million units in Q3 2017, and the number in Q3 2018 narrowed to 20.2 million units. The gap between Huawei and Samsung is narrowing; In particular, in the last two quarters, Samsung's shipments fell by more than 10% year on year, while Huawei's shipments increased by 40.9% and 32.9% year on year respectively. Lei Feng.com believes that it is really hard for Huawei to achieve such an achievement when the global smartphone shipments continue to decline.
Then, Huawei's next development and competition situation should be viewed from multiple dimensions of products and markets.
From the perspective of products, Huawei currently has two mobile phone brands: Huawei and Glory. The Huawei brand focuses on high-end. With the P20 series and Mate 20 series in 2018, Huawei has successfully established the reputation of the world's most powerful camera phone and Android phone king. In the high-end market, Huawei has been able to benchmark Samsung's S series and Note series. Therefore, the Huawei brand is recognized in both the Chinese market and the European and American markets.
According to the data provided by Huawei, 50% of the revenue of Huawei mobile phones in Europe this year comes from high-end flagship models; In Italy and Spain, Huawei surpassed Apple and Samsung to take the first place in market share. In Germany, Huawei has reached the second place in market share. In the UK and France, Huawei is firmly in the third place, and has opened a big gap with the fourth place. According to the overseas media Android Authority, the order volume of Mate 20 Pro within 10 days after its launch was 40% more than that of P20 Pro at the beginning of the year.
In the middle and low end market, the Glory brand adopts the tactics of "sea of opportunity", continues to make efforts in the middle and low end market, and adopts a variety of marketing methods, so it has a growing momentum in the Chinese market（ The sales performance of Double 11 Glory mobile phones on JD and Tmall platforms ranked first ）At the same time, it is also actively promoting its internationalization strategy. At present, its sales range covers more than 70 countries. According to Sanuo data, overseas sales of Glory mobile phones in the first half of 2018 increased by 150% year on year.
In addition, on October 31, 2018, when Glory launched Magic 2 to hit the high-end, its logo also changed significantly, which is also a major change for its internationalization strategy.
When will Huawei win the first place?
In terms of product strategy, market situation, and the most important technical skills and R&D investment, Huawei has initially been able to compete with Samsung for the first place in the world in terms of shipments. As a result, Lei Feng boldly predicted that according to the current development trend of the global smartphone market, Huawei would probably achieve the "historical certainty" as Yu Chengdong said in the third and fourth quarters of next year, and there would be no suspense in the next year.
Of course, everything depends on Huawei's continuous efforts and sobriety. After all, the Samsung Note 7 incident two years ago is still ahead of us, and we are not far away from it. Huawei needs to go a bit more steadily.
Note: Figures and data in this paper are from open channels.
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