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As second-quarter global smartphone sales continue to slump, Samsung has returned to growth after six straight quarters of declines while Huawei has fallen, though serious questions are

being raised about the numbers supplied by both Oppo and Huawei with industry executives claiming that the TCL Mobile owned brand Alcatel is the “clear #3 smartphone brand in Australia.

According to latest Gartner numbers, sales of iPhones continue to decline year-on-year, whilst Huawei market share further lifts despite US trade bans. In Australia, just over 2 million

smartphones were sold in Q2 – 7% lower than the same quarter last year. Globally, Q2 smartphone sales slipped 1.7% in Q2 to 368 million units, with demand for “high-end” phones slowing at a

greater rate than mid-range and low-end handsets. “To try to boost smartphone replacements, we’ve seen manufacturers bringing premium features such as multilens front/back cameras,

bezel-less displays and large batteries from their flagship smartphones into lower-priced models,” claims Gartner Senior Research Director, Anshul Gupta. Huawei and Samsung notched the

strongest annual sales increases in Q2 with 16.5% and 3.8% respectively. “As a result, they both grew market share in the quarter, which led them to account for more than a third of total

smartphone sales globally,” adds Gupta. Samsung sold over 75 million smartphones in Q2, growing its share 1.1 percentage points year over year. Gartner attributes strong demand for Samsung’s

new Galaxy A Series, with demand for the Galaxy S10 weakened during the quarter. Apple sold just under 38 million iPhones in Q2, a 13.8% decline year over year. “Too few incremental

benefits are preventing existing iPhone users from replacing their smartphones,” claims Gupta. “Apple has reached an inflection point marked by shifting its business toward services, which

represented 21% of the vendor’s total revenue in the first quarter of 2019.” Gartner forecasts global smartphone sales to total 1.5 billion units in 2019, and “remain weak” for the rest of

the year. About Post Author Roma Christian CONTRIBUTOR (Award-nominated technology writer)