Huawei Is Upbeat to Overtake Apple in Global Mobile Phone Shipments This Year

Xu Wei

(Yicai Global) April 13 — China’s leading smartphone maker Huawei Technologies Co. expects to overtake Apple in global mobile phone shipments by early next year, news site The Paper reported, citing one of the company’s senior executives.

“We may overtake Apple by the end of this year or early next year,” said Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group, yesterday, indicating the company is set to become the second largest smartphone maker in terms of global shipments.

Huawei has no problems in selling 15 million units of its latest flagship mobile phone P20 series, and it is very likely to sell 20 million units, said Yu, pointing to the company’s strong sales performance.

Huawei aims to become one of the world’s top mobile phone makers. However, Apple and Samsung currently sell far more handsets than the Chinese company despite their prices for flagship phones are much more expensive than Huawei’s. In the high-end handset market, the gap between Huawei and the other two is still significant.

However, Huawei’s mobile phones do not fall behind the two global competitors in terms of quality and performance, Yu emphasized. The global market has already shifted in recent years, leaving only three major mobile phone companies dominating the market, he said, adding China’s domestic market will also see a similar shake-up.

“In terms of investment, other brands are not in the same level with us. Looking from technology strength and growth trend, I’m confident that it is historical necessity that we will win,” Yu claimed.

Huawei’s sales revenue from its consumer business was CNY237.2 billion (USD37.7 billion) last year, up nearly 32 percent from the previous year, and its smartphone shipments exceeded 153 million units, its 2017 financial report showed.

Smartphone vendors shipped a total of 1.472 billion units last year, according to preliminary data from the International Data Corporation, IDC, Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. Samsung remained at the top last year, shipping 317.3 million units, an increase of 1.9 percent. Apple recaptured the top position in the fourth quarter but came in second for the whole year with shipments of 215.8 million units, up 0.2 percent compared with the previous year. Huawei shipped 153.1 million units, achieving the highest growth rate, up 9.9 percent from the year earlier.

Editor: Mevlut Katik