How Huawei and Xiaomi grew smartphone business in a tough market?

Gartner on smartphone market 2017The recent Gartner report highlighted that both Huawei and Xiaomi, two Chinese device brands, grew their smartphone business in a tough market.

Huawei has achieved an increase of 7.6 percent and Xiaomi 79 percent in global smartphone sales and grew market share in the fourth quarter.

Huawei’s smartphone growth was driven by additions including Mate 10 Lite, Honor 6C Pro and Enjoy 7S.

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Xiaomi’s smartphones, consisting of its Mi and Redmi models, helped accelerate its growth in the emerging Asia Pacific market. It also helped Xiaomi win back lost share in China.
Gartner on smartphone market Q4 2017Gartner analyst Anshul Gupta said that future growth opportunities for Huawei will reside in winning market share in emerging APAC and the U.S. Huawei is facing tough market conditions in the US due to perception related to security issues. Huawei needs to win telecom operator deals to penetrate in the U.S.

The report said Xiaomi’s biggest market outside China is India. The new brand will shine in India and achieve high growth. The other strategy of Xiaomi should be in increasing sales in Indonesia and other developing telecom markets in emerging APAC in order to position it as a strong global brand.

Smartphone sales rose 2.7 percent to over 1.5 billion units in 2017. Smartphone sales dipped 5.6 percent to nearly 408 million units in the fourth quarter of 2017.

Samsung will rely on its next flagship devices which will be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress 2018.

The success of these new phones will determine the growth in profit and average selling price of Samsung devices.

Apple faced challenges due to the later availability of iPhone X that led to slow upgrades to iPhone 8 and 8 Plus. Component shortages and manufacturing capacity constraints preceded a long delivery cycle for the iPhone X. iPhone X will bring a delayed sales boost for Apple in the first quarter of 2018, Gartner said.