Global smartphone sale declined by 5.7% in Q3 2020: Gartner report

Xiaomi, on the other hand, moved ahead of Apple into the third position for the first time ever with sales of 44.4 million units compared to Apple’s sales of 40.5 million units in the third quarter of 2020.

Samsung captured the maximum market share grabbing the top spot. (AP)

Global smartphone sales declined by 5.7% in the third quarter of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. The global smartphone sale stood at 366 million units in the past quarter.

Overall global mobile phone sales to end users totaled 401 million units, a decline of 8.7% year-over-year, a new report by Gartner states.

While that might sound like bad news, it's actually an improvement compared to the first and the second quarters of the pandemic-prone 2020. The report said that after two consecutive quarters of a decline of 20%, quarterly smartphone sales have started to show signs of recovery sequentially. However, smartphone sales continue to remain weak compared to 3Q 2019 even with vendors introducing multiple 5G smartphones and governments relaxing shelter-in-place instructions in some geographies.

As far as the market share is concerned, Samsung held the top position with 22% market share. The company sold 80,816 million units of smartphones which accounted for a 22% market share in 3Q 2020. Interestingly, the company witnessed a 2.2% growth as it sold 70,056.7 million units of smartphones and 20.3% market share in 3Q 2019.

The second spot was occupied by Huawei by selling 51,830.9 million units of smartphones, which accounted for a 14.1% market share during the past quarter. The company saw a 21.3% decline compared to the third quarter of 2020.

Xiaomi, on the other hand, moved ahead of Apple into the third position for the first time ever with sales of 44.4 million units compared to Apple's sales of 40.5 million units in the third quarter of 2020. While Xiaomi captured 12.1% of the market, Apple share stood at 11.1%. Interestingly, while Xiaomi's sales improved by 34.9%, Apple's sales declined by 0.6% compared to the 3Q 2020.

“The slight decrease was mainly due to Apple's delayed shipment start of its new 2020 iPhone generation, which in previous years would always start mid/end September. This year, the launch event and shipment start began 4 weeks later than usual,” Annette Zimmermann, research vice president at Gartner said in a statement.

Fifth position was occupied by Oppo by selling 29,890.4 million units of smartphones, which accounted for an 8.2% market share. It witnessed a decline of 2.3% compared to the same period last year.