Huawei will be relegated to the 7th place of the smartphone market in the world from 2021, a TrendForce report suggests. Cornered by the American sanctions against it and deprived of its subsidiary Honor, the Chinese group will record a 73% drop in sales of 5G mobile phones.
A report from TrendForce analysts sets out the state of the smartphone market in 2020. Marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, the mobile market recorded an 11% drop in production for the past year. Among the manufacturers most affected is Huawei. Deprived of Android license and Google applications, the Chinese group is descended to third place on the world podium. In 2020, Huawei only sold 170 million smartphones. We are far from the records of previous years (240 million in 2019).
As restrictions intensify on it, Huawei anticipates a further collapse in sales during the year 2021. According to TrendForce, the Chinese group will only sell 45 million 5G terminals worldwide, down 73% compared to 2020. Huawei should thus be satisfied with 8% of the 5G market share. Under these conditions, TrendForce affirms that Huawei will be relegated to 7th place in the ranking, behind Transsion, Oppo and Vivo from the current year.
Deprived of Honor, Huawei collapses
Obviously, the sanctions decreed by Donald Trump are at the origin of this sudden collapse. Before the implementation of the Trump decree in May 2019, Huawei was also close to capturing the world number 1 position from Samsung. The resale of the Honor subsidiary also contributes to the erosion of the sales figures of the Chinese firm. Without the results of Honor to inflate its numbers, Huawei is no longer able to compete with Samsung or Apple, the two behemoths in the sector.
Unlike Huawei, the rest of the smartphone market is expected to quickly regain color this year, despite containment measures still underway. “The global smartphone market will gradually recover as people get used to the ‘new normal’ resulting from the pandemic” TrendForce glides. In addition, the advent of 5G should push a crowd of consumers to renew their smartphone.
Source: TrendForce
