Huawei is still the world’s largest phone maker but Samsung is catching up fast

Yep, Huawei is still number one, despite the bad geopolitical luck it’s had in the past year or so, seeing it deprived of Google’s services and forced to use AOSP Android on its handsets. 

The market share percentage points before Samsung have shrunk significantly compared to the previous report, though, and now Huawei makes 19.7% of the world’s phones, a very small difference with the 19.6% of Samsung, so it may lose the pole position in the summer.

Still, it’s a remarkable achievement for a company that in 2018 was vouching to become the world’s largest phone maker by 2020, before the whirlwind of bans and restrictions hit its global business lines. At the time, it seemed like hubris, now it’s a reality, and Huawei will have at least that goal covered to soother the geopolitical situation with while it is waiting for better news on the Android front.

Apart from Huawei’s not-so-Sisyphean climb to the top, given that it took it just a year and a half and some record periscope zoom or out-folding bendy phone shenanigans, the top three list is completed by Apple, followed by the BBK holding juggernauts of Oppo and Vivo with 8% each, then Xiaomi, again with 8% market share. Everyone else is lumped in the “others” category which, admittedly, is the largest piece of the pie now.