The Chinese smartphone market is a very interesting beast to keep tabs on. In the past year, we’ve seen the “Apple of China“, Xiaomi, leapfrog its competition on its way to no. 1 smartphone vendor in China, and shows no signs of letting up. A few rungs down the Chinese market ladder we find another Chinese manufacturer, Huawei, who hasn’t quite seen the meteoric rise that Xiaomi has experienced in their homeland, but still looks to have made big gains in 2014. According to a leaked internal memo, Huawei’s smartphone sales have grown by 40% year-on-year to reach $11.8 billion for the year.
It’s an impressive growth for the year, and perhaps the only downside is that Huawei had planned to ship 80 million devices in 2014 and had only shipped 75 million. If, however, we compare this to the growth that Xiaomi had over the same period, Xiaomi sold 26 million handsets in the first half of 2014 alone – if they confirm that they have reached their target of 60 million devices for 2014, that will have been a three-fold increase in sales since selling 18.7 million devices in 2013. It’s obvious the Chinese market is hotting up, and its only a matter of when, not if, they make a run at the Western markets.
What do you think about Huawei’s smartphone sales in 2014? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Source: Reuters via TalkAndroid
