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Apple has grown its share of the Australian smartphone market amid an overall year-on-year decline of 15.4 per cent in the third calendar quarter of 2020.
According to analyst firm Gartner, Apple iPhones now comprise almost half of third quarter sales, selling 896,000 units in the third quarter.
This marks a 2.6 per cent rise, year-on-year, while Samsung, the second-biggest player, saw sales to end-users fall by 8.6 per cent.
In total, over 1.8 million smartphones were sold in Australia in the third quarter of 2020, down by 15.4 per cent compared to the same quarter of 2019.
Samsung, which accounts for 27 per cent of the market, sold 498,000 units while Huawei sold 166,000 devices and accounts for 10 per cent market share.
Although fellow Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi pushed ahead of Apple in the September quarter to take third place globally, it accounts for just 4 per cent of Australian sales with 75,000 phones sold.
Bringing up the rear was Oppo with 66,000 devices sold and 3.6 per cent market share, while the remaining 6.4 per cent — or 117,000 — was taken by ‘other’ manufacturers.
Overall, 366 million smartphones were in the third quarter of 2020, down 5.7 per cent from the third quarter of 2019.
Globally, Samsung held the top spot with 22 per cent market share, shifting 80.8 million units, while Huawei, in second position, sold 51.8 million units, making up 14.1 per cent of global market share.
Xiaomi moved ahead of Apple into the third position for the first time ever with sales of 44.4 million units, compared to Apple’s sales of 40.6 million units in the third quarter of 2020.
According to Gartner, it is thought that Xiaomi has gained from Huawei’s loss, including strong performance in China.
Meanwhile, Apple sold 40.6 million units in the period, a decline of 0.6 per cent as compared to 2019, with the slight decrease mainly due to Apple’s delayed shipment start of its new 2020 iPhone generation.
“Consumers are limiting their discretionary spend even as some lockdown conditions have started to improve,” said Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner. “Global smartphone sales experienced moderate growth from the second quarter of 2020 to the third quarter. This was due to pent-up demand from previous quarters.”
