Gartner: Smartphone shipments fail to impress in Q4 2018

2018 wasn't a great year for smartphone sales. According to the latest research by Gartner, the total number of devices sold rose from 407.845 million to 408.358 million, which is a tiny 0.1% growth. The biggest loser was Apple, selling 11.8% fewer units in the last holiday period compared with the same quarter in 2017.

Samsung also sold fewer units YoY in Q4 2018 but managed to stay ahead due to the massive gap from competitors. Huawei managed to increase its sales by one third and is now challenging Apple for the second place. Xiaomi jumped ahead of Oppo in the Top 5 with 6 million more units sold.

According to Gartner, Apple sales declined mostly in Greater China, where the market share fell to 8.8% from 14.6% in the previous year. In total for the whole of 2018, the iPhone manufacturer sold 209 million phones which is 2.7% less than the twelve months of 2017. The reason is buyers are now delaying upgrades as waiting for bigger innovations and are seeing more affordable alternatives from Chinese vendors, said Anshul Gupta, Senior Research Director at Gartner.

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