Samsung phone sales down

Samsung Electronics remained the top smartphone vendor in the second quarter of the year despite suffering a sharp decline in sales.

Samsung sold 54.75 million smartphones in the April-June period to take an 18.6-per-cent market share, according to market researcher Gartner.

Its second-quarter sales suffered a 27.1-per-cent year-on-year decline, the largest drop among the top five smartphone brands, Gartner added.

“The Covid-19 pandemic continued to negatively affect Samsung’s performance in the second quarter of 2020,” said Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner. “Demand for its flagship S Series smartphones did little to revive its smartphone sales globally.”

China’s Huawei Technologies came a close second with an 18.4-per-cent market share after it sold 54.12 million smartphones in the second quarter, down 6.8 percent from a year ago.

“Huawei’s performance in China helped it avoid a worse quarterly performance,” Gartner said.

US tech titan Apple was third with a 13-per-cent market share after it sold 38 million iPhones in the second quarter, down 0.4 percent from a year earlier.

Chinese brands Xiaomi and Oppo took the fourth and fifth spots in the global smartphone sales rankings, respectively, Gartner said.

The global smartphone sales in the second quarter dropped 20.4 percent year-on-year to 295 million units, according to Gartner, as the Covid-19 pandemic continued to undermine the mobile phone industry.