COVID-19 impact | Global smartphone sales slump 20% in Q1 2020: Report

Representative Image (Reuters)

The novel coronavirus pandemic has hit the technology sector very hard. According to the latest industry research report from Gartner, global smartphone shipments declined by 20.2 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of the year.

Samsung, Huawei, Apple, and OPPO, four of the top five smartphone brands in terms of market share, saw a sharp decline in their sales figure.

While Apple witnessed a smaller decline by 8.2-percent as compared to other brands, Chinese device maker Xiaomi was the only brand to record a growth in this quarter.

However, other top OEMs, including Samsung, Huawei, and Oppo saw the percentage of dropped shipments slump into the double digits.

Samsung, Huawei, and Oppo saw the biggest declines in the Q1 2020. Despite having the worst decline of all the top five brands, Huawei still managed to maintain its second position.

Anshul Gupta, senior research analyst at Gartner, said, “Huawei will have a challenging year. It has developed the Huawei Mobile Service (HMS) ecosystem, but with the lack of popular Google apps and Google Play store, Huawei is unlikely to attract new smartphone buyers in international markets.”

Despite its declining sales figures, Apple still managed a relatively strong quarter as compared to the other brands. Oppo, Huawei, and Vivo were faced with supply constraints and store closures due to the early impact of the virus in China.

The declining trend is expected to continue through the second quarter in 2020 as the pandemic hit several major markets towards the end of Q1 2020 and continued for more than a month in the second quarter.