Huawei like China today got too big for its shoes and it ended badly, we will soon say there used to be a company called Huawei
Huawei loses smartphone market lead in China
Oppo and Apple are on the rise in China as the country's most famous provider continues to fall
by:
Bobby Hellard
8 Mar 2021
Huawei is
not only losing ground in Europe, as its share of the smartphone market in China is also shrinking.
That's according to
Counterpoint Research, which revealed that rival Chinese brand Oppo overtook Huawei to become the number one provider in China for 2020's fourth quarter after claiming 21% of the smartphone market.
Huawei was just 1% behind, but it has seen a gradual fall from the top ever since it was hit by
US sanctions that banned American firms, such as Google and Qualcomm, from selling their products to the Chinese firm.
Counterpoint's senior analyst Varun Mishra puts Oppo's success down to changing its pricing strategy, but he also points to Huawei's fall.
"The rebranding of the
Reno series and launching a more capable device at a lower price point than its predecessor helped Oppo capture the affordable premium segment," Mishra said. "The strong momentum of the A series in the mid-segment strengthened the product portfolio for Oppo and it was able to cater to the
5G demand in China across a wide price band. This was further helped by the decline of Huawei."
This could be one of the reasons for
the recent sale of the Honor brand, which automatically took some of Huawei's market share with it, and why the firm has been launching fewer models in recent months.
Counterpoint suggests that a depleting inventory of components has forced Huawei to focus more on the "premium" categories with more elite products, such as the Mate X2 and the
P40 Pro. This has, it suggests, has created a gap in the middle tier of the Chinese smartphone market.
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By
HONG KONG—Huawei Technologies Co. suffered a rare decline in revenue during the fourth quarter last year, as U.S. sanctions hammered its business and sales outside of China fell particularly hard.
The Chinese telecom giant said sales of its once hugely popular smartphones were suffering the most of all its business segments, with the company showing signs of difficulty
sourcing the advanced chips needed to run its handsets due to U.S. export restrictions imposed last year.
Revenue in the fourth quarter fell 11.2% to 220.1 billion yuan, equivalent to about $33.6 billion, from a year earlier, according to calculations based on previously released figures by Huawei. For the full year, the company said revenue still grew 3.8% to a record 891.4 billion yuan, thanks to stronger performance earlier in the year. It still marked one of Huawei’s slowest years for revenue growth on record, the closely held company said.
“The supply restrictions for our smartphone business has caused us a great impact, and we haven’t been able to see a clear picture in the supply for our smartphones,” said Ken Hu, one of Huawei’s three deputy chairmen, during a press conference Wednesday at the company’s headquarters in Shenzhen. “We think this is a very unfair situation to Huawei and it has caused a lot of damage to us.”