The US sanctions against Huawei are now really taking position. A new report from Canalys Research shows that Huawei dropped to sixth place for global phone sales in the fourth quarter of 2020, a dramatic drop from the peak earlier this year. In Canalys’ current market share table, Huawei was banned from the “other” category.
If you get stuck in ‘other’, it means that there is no clear year-on-year drop in Canalys’ data, but it does mention that Huawei sold 32 million phones in Q2 2020. We can look at last year’s Q4 2019 report, where Huawei sold $ 56 million. units, and occurs with a year-on-year decline of 42 percent. Every other Chinese supplier in Canalys’ chart has seen huge double-digit gains in place of Huawei, with Xiaomi as the biggest winner with 31 percent year-on-year growth. Huawei now stands behind Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo.
The US export ban started in May 2019, and we only see the other effect of Huawei a year and a half later. Huawei’s sales are likely to decline further. The company announced a major change in November 2020, saying it was selling its ‘Honor’ budget brand to a third party to keep its existing supply chain alive. The buyer of Honor is only listed as a consortium of more than 30 agents and dealers. ‘
Canalys’ market share chart. The US sanctions started in Q2 2019.
Huawei selling Honor will be a bit like GM selling Chevy. The companies all chose from the same particle box, used the same software and were basically the same devices targeted at different markets, with a few modest adjustments. Since this was done with a view to keeping Huawei’s existing suppliers in operation, it sounds as if there will still be no real parts differences between the two companies, and it is not clear how they can exist “separately”. For now, however, Huawei is banned and Honor is not, so the plan works!
Canalys ‘Huawei data all contains the ominous asterisk that it’s includes Honor sales’, and it probably won’t be done in the future. The Honor sub-brand accounted for 29 percent of Huawei’s sales in 2019, so we’re not close to the bottom.