It shipped 10 million more smartphones than predicted

Company chairman Xu Zhijun revealed earlier today that Huawei managed to ship an incredible 240 million smartphones throughout 2019. This represents an impressive 16% increase over the 206 million devices sold a year earlier and humongous growth of almost 57% when compared to the 153 million units shipped in 2017.

The figure isn’t quite as high as the 270 million goal set back in October, but it is significantly better than the 230 million estimation announced just last month.

Huawei says the impressive results are largely down to strong performance of the Huawei P and Huawei Mate lineups. Sales of these devices grew by over 50% year-on-year thanks to an increased focus on China, which is where most of the phones were sold, following the implementation of the US trade ban.

A strong start in Europe earlier in 2019 combined with an aggressive marketing strategy later in the year also helped.

What will happen in 2020?

Huawei hasn’t yet announced shipment estimates for 2020, but the expectation is that numbers will start to fall. The company isn’t able to release entirely new devices with Google Play Services in global markets due to the ongoing trade ban.

Unless things change in the near future, the likes of Samsung and Xiaomi should gradually start to eat up the brand’s market share as their latest flagship, mid-range, and budget models are unveiled to compete with Huawei’s aging lineup of devices.

China is expected to help soften the blow, but Huawei’s strong growth is likely to slow as the segment becomes even more saturated.