Market analysts attribute the rise to the ease of a slowdown in the world’s largest smartphone market, China.

Since the start of this decade, Samsung and Apple have ruled the smartphone world in terms of market share. For the first time in seven years, China’s Huawei Technologies has split the duopoly, overtaking Apple as the second largest smartphone seller.

According to reports by IDC, Huawei has now gained a 15.8 percent stake in the global market share, compared to Samsung’s 20.9 percent and Apple’s 12.1 percent in Q2 of 2018. This is a huge leap in growth for Huawei – 40.9 percent, to be exact, with a shipment of 54.2 million smartphones worldwide in the same quarter.

Market analysts attribute the rise to the ease of a slowdown in the world’s largest smartphone market, China, as well as Huawei’s strategy of offering more feature-packed smartphones.

“Huawei is shifting to more value-added models, by launching new flagship smartphones with the latest features,” IHS Markit analyst Gerrit Schneemann said, adding how the Huawei P20 Pro beat competitors to become the first flagship smartphone model to be equipped with triple cameras.

It is predicted that there will be movements in numbers this quarter with Samsung and Apple both slated to release new smartphone models in August and September respectively.

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However, it is equally important to note that the overall smartphone market has shrunk by 1.8 percent in the last quarter – the third consecutive drop in year-over-year declines.

“The combination of market saturation, increased smartphone penetration rates, and climbing ASPs continue to dampen the growth of the overall market,” said Anthony Scarsella, research manager at IDC. “Consumers remain willing to pay more for premium offerings in numerous markets and they now expect their device to outlast and outperform previous generations of that device which cost considerably less a few years ago.

“To contest this slowdown, vendors will need to focus on new innovative features and form factors combined with incentives and promotions to drive growth in many of these highly competitive markets moving forward.”

Let’s see how Samsung and Apple will rise to the challenge.