Huawei Q4 smartphone shipments drop 41% as US sanctions bite

GUANGZHOU, China – Huawei’s smartphone shipments continued to fall in the wake of US sanctions, bringing the world’s No.1 supplier down under competitors like Apple.

The Chinese tech giant shipped 33 million smartphones globally in the fourth quarter of 2020, a 41% drop year-over-year, bringing its market share to 8%, according to data released Thursday by Counterpoint Research.

This made Huawei the sixth-largest smartphone maker in the December quarter, behind Chinese rivals like Oppo and Vivo and far behind Apple and Samsung.

Data released Thursday by Canalys showed that Huawei shipped 32 million smartphones in the fourth quarter, down almost 43% from last year. This is the first time Huawei has come out of the top five in six years, Canalys said.

“Huawei has retreated significantly in most markets following US sanctions,” Amber Liu, analyst at Canalys Research, said in a report.

The latest figures mark a sharp drop for Huawei compared to the second quarter of 2020 when it was world No. 1 in shipments.

For the whole of 2020, Huawei was the third largest in smartphone shipments, according to the research companies. Huawei responded to the latest figures by noting its third place.

“Huawei has always been committed to innovation and is committed to creating more value for consumers with better products. Over the past year, our smartphone business has grown robustly and tablets, PCs and portable devices have experienced significant growth. We remain confident in the future. The company said in a statement.

Huawei’s woes come as Apple shipped 90.1 million phones in the fourth quarter, the most ever shipped by a vendor in smartphone history, according to IDC. Apple also posted a record quarter revenue in China.

Indeed, the American sanctions weigh heavily on Huawei’s smartphone activity. In 2019, Huawei was put on a U.S. blacklist called the Entity List, which blocked U.S. companies from exporting key components and software to the company.

The biggest effect of this has been to cut Huawei off from Google’s Android operating system. This isn’t a big deal in China where Google services like Gmail and search are blocked. But in international markets, this has been the key to Huawei’s growth as consumers are used to these services.