Quarterly smartphone sales by vendor worldwide 2016-2021

Apple appears to have recovered from their coronavirus (COVID-19) related drop in sales in 2020 and 2021, selling more units in the fourth quarter of 2021 than ever over the demonstrated period, with over 80 million devices. Xiaomi made the largest increase among the major smartphone vendors, now selling close to 45 million devices.

Huawei's rise and fall

Huawei had enjoyed solid growth since the first quarter of 2016, and were one of the companies to best weather the initial impacts of the pandemic. At the start of the reported period, the company sold 28.86 million units, which was enough to give Huawei an 8.3 percent share of the market. By the second quarter of 2020 that figure rose to 54.13 million units, giving the Chinese smartphone vendor a market share of 18.4 percent worldwide. The second quarter of 2020 also marked the first time that Huawei shipped more devices than any other smartphone vendor, shipping 55.8 million units, ahead of the 54.2 million that Samsung shipped. However, in the fourth quarter of 2020, their sales dropped to 34 million units during the first quarter of 2021, they were no longer part of the leading smartphone vendors by sold units.

COVID-19 took a heavy toll on Samsung

While some vendors showed resilience to the COVID-19 outbreak, Samsung first took a heavier knock. For approximately six-and-a-half years, Samsung has shipped more than 70 million smartphones in every quarter. This came to an end in the first quarter of 2020, when the company shipped 55.33 million devices. However, they have since recovered and in the second quarter of 2021, the 57.75 million units sold were enough to establish Samsung as the smartphone market leaders.