It seems like 2020 continues to hit Apple the hardest out of all smartphone companies across the globe. A new report from Canalys now shows that the iPhone maker dropped to fourth place in Q3 2020. This is as a number of other firms like Xiaomi are seem to be picking up lately. In fact, the Chinese tech company overtook Apple taking third place in the global smartphone market.

Q3 2020 saw worldwide smartphone shipments reach 348 million units. This accounts for 1% year-on-year decline.

Samsung regained the lead, up 2% to 80.2 million units. On the other hand, Huawei was lucky to slip into second place with a 23% fall to 51.7 million units. Xiaomi took third place for the first time, reaching 47.1 million units with 45% growth.

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Meanwhile, Apple shipped 43.2 million iPhones, accounting for a 1% drop. It is important to note that the American tech firm hadn’t launched the flagship iPhone 12 by September. So, we might want to see what the recent launch does to those figures come the end of 2020.

According to Canalys, credit should also go to Xiaomi who aggressively marketed their new devices across various markets including its biggest one, China.

“Xiaomi executed with aggression to seize shipments from Huawei,” said Mo Jia, Analyst. “There was symmetry in Q3, as Xiaomi added 14.5 million units and Huawei lost 15.1 million. In Europe, a key battleground, Huawei’s shipments fell 25%, while Xiaomi’s grew 88%. Xiaomi took a risk setting high production targets, but this move paid off when it was able to fill channels in Q3 with high-volume devices, such as the Redmi 9 series,” he added.

Vivo completed the quarter in the top five as well, shipping 31.8 million units. OPPO came sixth with 31.1 million units. Perhaps Xiaomi’s rise to the top three will also motivate these two to step up and try to take the top places in the global market.