DURBAN – New data from web analytics firm StatCounter shows that Chinese smartphone maker Huawei's share of the smartphone market in South Africa has grown significantly over the past year according to BusinessTech.
Huawei saw its share of the local market improve from percent in May 2018 to 22.9 percent at the end of May 2019. This shows substantial growth from the 11.26 percent market share in 2017.
Apple is another smartphone maker that experienced substantial growth over the past year from 11.17 percent to 14.87 percent since last year May. The iPhone maker dropped from a 16.27 percent in November 2018 after the launch of the iPhone Xs and iPhone Xr range in September and October of 2018.
However, Samsung continues to be a dominant player in the South African market with its market share growing from 43.66 percent last year May to 43.71 percent in May 2018.
Source: StatCounter
Globally
Data from research and advisory group, Gartner showed that globally Huawei has retained their No.2 spot on the rankings while continuing to reduce the gap with Samsung.
In the first quarter of 2019, Samsung kept the top spot in global smartphone sales achieving 19.2 percent market share. Chinese smartphone maker Huawei had achieved the highest year-over-year growth among the world's top five top five. It has grown by 44.5 percent and smartphone sales total 58.4 million units.
Decline in smartphone sales
Smartphone unit sales in South Africa have declined by about 7 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2019, while the value of the smartphone market climbed by nearly 3 percent to around R8.6 billion, as shoppers splashed out on higher-end models with larger screen sizes.
That is according to newly released point of sale tracking data from Growth from Knowledge (GfK), South Africa’s Weekly Monitor, which indicates that the consumer technical goods market as a whole grew by 1.6 percent compared to the same quarter in 2018.