Huawei must have a mixture of emotions now. The company is facing the heat as a result of US sanctions on one side but manages to survive in certain markets on the other. One such market is Russia where the company has maintained the top spot in online smartphone shipment share consecutively in Q3 2020.
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Counterpoint Research has released a report on the Smartphone market in Russia for Q3 2020. Although things are looking bad for Huawei overall, it maintains the lead in the Online Smartphone shipment market list with a share of 27.8%. This is a 2.2% YoY increase from 2019 but a 7.2% decline QoQ. Among this, the ex-sister brand‘s Honor 30 series helps it bag most of the online share in 5G models.
Overall smartphone sales get an increase of 5% YoY(Year on Year) in Russia whereas the online smartphone sales hit 34% in Q3 2020. This is a 2% QoQ(Quarter over Quarter) increase from Q2. Report says that strict public distancing norms along with promotional offers like gifts, cashback drove online sales.
Precisely, Honor offered cash coupons to boost its sales whereas companies like Xiaomi managed to crack Samsung with aggressive models. In fact, it has five of the top-10 online smartphone models with Redmi Note 8 Pro, 8A, Note 9 being its top three devices. Chinese company realme managed to enter the top-5 for the first time with a 1.7% YoY increase in share.
EDITOR’S PICK: Huawei levels Samsung in Counterpoint’s September 2020 list of Top-selling 5G Smartphones Globally
Although Samsung leads overall revenue in offline and online segments, it lost the online share to Huawei. In fact, its Galaxy A51, A31 are among the top-selling devices online and offline but its online shipment market share for Q3 is 26.3% making it trail behind Xiaomi and Huawei. The report says that Samsung’s decision to focus more on offline is the reason for this.
Anyway, the list also has Apple sitting at 4th place with an 8.3% online market share. As for the online platforms, M.Video-Eldorado, Russia’s biggest consumer electronic chain, leads the online platform in Russia with a share of 32.5%.
Research Associate Soumen Mandal says that Chinese brands are strengthening their position in lower and mid-price segments. This is evident in Q3 2020 report as the report says that the average price of smartphones dropped 5% YoY in Russia and sits at $224 in Q3 2020.
