Worldwide smartphone sales to end-users totaled 366 million units in the
third quarter of 2020, down 5.7% from the third quarter of 2019,
according to Gartner. Overall global mobile phone sales to end users
totaled 401 million units, a decline of 8.7% year-over-year. From the
report: After two consecutive quarters of a decline of 20%, quarterly
smartphone sales have started to show signs of recovery sequentially.
However, smartphone sales continued to remain weaker compared to the same
time period in in 2019, even with vendors introducing multiple 5G
smartphones and governments relaxing shelter-in-place instructions in
some geographies. “Consumers are limiting their discretionary spend even
as some lockdown conditions have started to improve,” said Anshul Gupta,
senior research director at Gartner. “Global smartphone sales experienced
moderate growth from the second quarter of 2020 to the third quarter.
This was due to pent-up demand from previous quarters.” Economic
uncertainties and continued fear of the next wave of the pandemic
continue to put pressure on nonessential spending through the end of
2020. The delay in 5G network upgrades has also limited the opportunity
for smartphone vendors. Among the top five smartphone manufacturers,
Samsung held the No. 1 position with 22% market share. Xiaomi moved ahead
of Apple into the No. 3 position for the first time ever with sales of
44.4 million units compared to Apple’s sales of 40.5 million units in the
third quarter of 2020. …
