Huawei Overtakes Xiaomi To Top China’s Smartphone Market For First Time: Report

Huawei, the Chinese tech firm that produces smartphones in addition to networking equipment, became the top seller of smartphones in China for the first time during the last quarter.

That’s according to data from research firm Canalys, which said that an 81 percent surge in sales year-on-year pushed Huawei past Xiaomi, which held the top spot during the previous quarter of business.

Canalys made the announcement as a precursor to the release of its full figures for Chinese smartphone sales in Q3 2015, so we don’t yet know where Apple, Samsung, or others rank for the three-month period. Crucially, nor do we have sales/marketshare figures. For example, it seems likely that Canalys is comparing sales-in figures for Huawei (i.e. channel and consumer sales) with sales-out (direct to consumers) for Xiaomi. A fair match, because that’s how they both do sales, but worth noting all the same.

Despite jumping the gun with a media release devoid of any details — it’s a little worrying to see that analyst firms are increasingly keen to beat each other to making big reveals without providing the workings behind their claims — Canalys believes that Xiaomi, which edged Samsung to become China’s biggest smartphone seller in 2014, is going through a tricky period on home soil.

Xiaomi claimed to have sold 61 million smartphones in China during 2014, but the firm is struggling to reach its goal of 80 million for this year — a figure that was reduced from an original target of 100 million — according to Canalys.

The company, which expanded to Latin America this summer, sold nearly 35 million phones during the first half of 2015, is “under tremendous pressure to keep growing as an international player as it is slowing down in its key home market,” said Canalys analyst Jessie Ding in a statement.

Xiaomi, for its part, told TechCrunch that the analysis could be down to timing:

“We just released Redmi Note 2 in mid August and Mi 4c in late September, which means our product lineup went through a transition period in Q3 2015, and we had to ramp up supply gradually to meet demand,” a spokesperson said.

Finally, TechCrunch understands that the gap between Xiaomi and Huawei’s figures — according to Canalys’s research — is not huge. So a change in leadership is more a testament to Huawei’s progress than any major crisis at Xiaomi. (Though let’s see if it can hit that sales target for 2015.)

Banned from selling networking gear to the U.S. government last year, Huawei’s consumer electronics business is taking off with a series of appealing devices. An Android smartwatch, a smartphone with an Apple-style 3D Touch feature, and the impressive Google Nexus-branded Nexus 6P are all fruits of its labor.

Comments

The EHang 184 Is A Human-Sized Drone Taking Off At CES

We’ve seen some pretty cool stuff on day 1 of CES 2016, but probably nothing more eye-catching than the EHang 184, a human-sized drone built by the Chinese UAV company EHang . Yes you heard right — a giant autonomous drone that fits a human. It’s basically what you would expect to see if someone shrunk you down to the size of a LEGO and stuck you next to a DJI Inspire. Except no one was shrunk, and the giant flying machine was sitting smack in the middle of the CES drone section. EHang, which was founded in 2014 and has raised about $50M in venture fundingto date, was pretty gung-ho about telling everyone at CES that the 184 was the future of personal transport. And for the most part, people were too in awe to question them. But the reality is that the company probably was using the 184 as more of a marketing tool for their standard-sized drones like the Ghost . Not that we’re saying that the 184 will never be a real thing, just that it probably isn’t co...

Western Union Brings Money Transfer And Its Tricky Fees To Chat Apps

Remittance has always been a shady business. Migrant workers need to send money they earn home to their families, but get hit with fine print fees so less cash comes out the other side than they might assume. Remittance companies earn extra by keeping the margin between their own made up exchange rate and the real one. Western Union is the best known remittance company, with 500,000 brick-and-mortar locations around the world. But tech startups like TransferWise, Azimo, and WorldRemit are gunning for the business. They hope to increase convenience and reduce fees to lure customers away from Western Union, Moneygram, and other old-school remittance providers. So Western Union is going digital thanks to partnerships with big messaging apps. It launched its Western Union Connect system in October last year, followed by a partnership with WeChat for sending up to $100. Now it’s getting into bed with Viber , which has over 664 million “unique” users, thou...

Following Patent Deal, Every Time Apple Sells An iPhone, Ericsson Gets A Bit Of Money

Telecommunications infrastructure company Ericsson just announced that it has reached an agreement with Apple over an ongoing patent dispute. For the next seven years, Apple will pay a fraction of its iPhone and iPad profit to Ericsson in royalties. Back in February, Ericsson filed suits in many different jurisdictions for patent infringement (the International Trade Commission, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, as well as courts in the U.K., Germany and the Netherlands). According to the Swedish company, Apple has been violating 41 patents over the past few years with its iPhone and iPad, in particular patents related to GSM, UMTS and LTE technologies. As expected, the two companies have reached an agreement and Ericsson is dropping all of its lawsuits. Today’s news isn’t particularly surprising as Ericsson holds more than 35,000 patents. Many of them are related to wireles...

Google Calls Out EFF Over Bogus Claims That It Snoops On Students With Its Chromebooks

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) caused quite a stir this week when it alleged that Google is using its Chromebook platform, which has made a significant impact in the education sector, to snoop on students. The charges were damning, with the EFF claiming that Google was violating its own corporate policies and using students’ personally identifiable browsing data/habits to refine its services, in addition to sharing that data with partners. "EFF bases this petition on evidence that Google is engaged in collecting, maintaining, using, and sharing student personal information in violation of the 'K-12 School Service Provider Pledge to Safeguard Student Privacy' (Student Privacy Pledge), of which it is a signatory,” alleged the EFF in its initial FTC complaint. Google takes such allegations very seriously, and has thus responded to every claim brought forth by the EFF. “While we appreciate the EFF’s focus on student data privacy, we are confid...

Android Oreo vs iOS 11: What’s different and what’s the same?

Google just announced Android Oreo and it packs a handful of new features. Some are at the system level and speed up the system and extend the battery life, while others are features that will change the way users interact with their phone. A lot of these features should be familiar to iPhone and iPad owners. Normally Apple is the one accused of copying Android, but for Android Oreo, Google lifted a handful of features straight from iOS, while a couple of new functions are hitting Android before iOS. Notifications Google cribbed iOS for Android’s new notification scheme. In An...

Exciting Technology

Search This Blog