A new report has revealed that the global smartphone market saw a slight decline in the fourth and final quarter of last year. While Q4 2020 saw a decline of just 5.4 percent, the overall annual sales fell by 12.5 percent.
According to Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner, “The sales of more 5G smartphones and lower-to-mid-tier smartphones minimized the market decline in the fourth quarter of 2020. Even as consumers remained cautious in their spending and held off on some discretionary purchases, 5G smartphones and pro-camera features encouraged some end users to purchase new smartphones or upgrade their current smartphones in the quarter.”
Furthermore, Apple was the top vendor smart vendor during the fourth quarter, and even surpassed Huawei as it held the No. 2 spot in the smartphone brand rankings for the full year of 2020. In the final quarter, the Cupertino based giant’s iPhone 12 series launch helped it achieve double digit growth, which also enabled it to overtake Samsung to become the leading smartphone vendor during the quarter. Notably, the last time Apple led the smartphone market was in the fourth quarter of 2016.
The South Korean tech giant still lead the annual smartphone vendor rankings. However, it saw a year on year fall of 14.6 percent last year. Although, despite the decline and intense competition from Chinese vendors like Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi, it still managed to retain the top spot. Interestingly, Apple and Xiaomi were the only two brands in the top 5 rankings to witness a growth. Meanwhile, Huawei witnessed the highest decline among every other vendor, with sales dropping by 24.1 percent year on year.
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