A recent report by a well-known Chinese publication, Sina Finance, came out to reveal that Xiaomi is now the world’s third-largest smartphone manufacturer. In the shared chart, you can get to see monthly shipments from the top six manufacturers, on a global scale. Different from a recent study about the East African market, this one also consists of digits accumulated during the whole of 2019 as well as the first two months of 2020.

But what we certainly have to talk about is the shock that is Xiaomi overtaking Huawei in 2020. Anyone that has been following up knows how much promise Huawei was still beaming even despite the troubles that it went through with the market in the USA. So how did this happen to a company that was once on the brink of taking first place?

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Huawei Drops To Fourth Place

As mentioned, Xiaomi has now risen to third place globally above Huawei, that’s now dropped to the fourth place. This is slightly above the likes of OPPO and Vivo.

Apparently, Huawei did sell more devices in the last quarter of 2020, but Xiaomi took over in February. This is by managing to sell 6 million handsets over Huawei’s 5.5 million units. But the drop is also owed hugely to the first two companies.

During that very same month, Samsung managed to shelf 18.2 million devices while Apple sold 10.2 million phones. In January though, Huawei dominated with 12.2 million sold units, as Xiaomi trailed with 10 million. So it is clear that the numbers dropped a lot in  February and yes, the coronavirus pandemic was to blame.

Xiaomi Takes Over

We may continue to keep talking about Huawei’s fall from grace but we cannot ignore to address how fast Xiaomi has risen. Clearly, the Beijing-based manufacturer has been trying to build its presence beyond its home market. This includes the aggressive campaign that it has been carrying out even in Kenya. 2019 and 2020 saw the company open up Mi Home stores in Various locations in Nairobi and of course, increase its market share in the country.

On the other hand, Huawei’s woes with the U.S government turned out to be much more than just superficial. The feud forced the company to terminate partnerships with Google, meaning no more of its new devices could come in with Google Services. This affected the Mate 30 series sales in many of the world’s biggest markets. This then extended further and even now, there is still no green light for Google to resume business with Huawei.

It was so bad on their side that the company was even started renewing its old phones so as to keep selling units with Google Services. But even after then, it is clear that Huawei is still popular but the numbers could be better.