– Apple lost more ground in the shrinking smartphone market last quarter, with a sales tracker saying the tech giant was pushed off the top-three seller list by a Chinese rival.Apple fell to fourth place in global smartphone sales, shipping 35.3 million iPhones in the second quarter compared to the 36.2 million units shipped by Oppo, according to a report from IHS Markit this week.
While California-based Apple has been aggressively promoting iPhones, current-generation smartphones have “super-premium” prices while models a few years old are still costly compared to bargain Android-powered handsets, the analyst reasoned. “The effect of the ban did not translate into falling shipments during this quarter, which will not be the case in the future,” Counterpoint associate research director Tarun Pathak said in the firm’s market report.
“These brands have been aggressively expanding outside China and achieving growth offsetting the saturation in their home market,” said Counterpoint research analyst Varun Mishra. In the just-ended quarter, Apple for the first time took in less than half its revenue from the iPhone, the longtime cash and profit driver for the company.
So Oppo is now giving Samsung & Huawei a run for their smartphones.