The COVID-19 pandemic continued to impact the global mobile phone industry, as worldwide sales of smartphones to end users totaled 295 million units, a decline of 20.4% in the second quarter of 2020, according to Gartner, Inc.
Among the top five smartphone vendors, Samsung experienced the largest decline in sales while Apple’s smartphone sales were nearly flat year-over-year. Although Huawei also declined in smartphone sales year-over-year, it experienced 27.4% growth, quarter-over-quarter, moving it into a virtual tie with Samsung for the No.1 position.
Almost all major markets, except China, continued to face some form of shelter-in-place restrictions for most of the second quarter of 2020 which led to continued declining smartphone demand. “The improved situation in China saw demand recovering quarter- over-quarter,” said
Even with increased demand, smartphone sales in China declined 7% in the second quarter of 2020, with nearly 94 million smartphones sold. India which adopted rigorous lockdowns (even restricting e-commerce) recorded the worst smartphone sales decline (-46%) among the top five countries in the world.