This January, 2021, OPPO held the largest smartphone market share in China for the first time in history. They also became the #2 5G manufacturer in China. OPPO's smartphone market share in China reached 21% in January of 2021, beating Vivo, Huawei, Apple, Xiaomi, and the rest.
You’d have come to realize by now that foldable smartphones come for a premium. They are a luxury not meant for everyone. That said, the market of foldable phones is fiercely poised with Huawei introducing its third-generation handset in the Mate X2 that delivers a different, sleeker form factor than its predecessor. This new device unfolds an expensive rivalry by knocking at the door of Samsung Galaxy Z Fold2 which, after a head start of five odd months, finally has a competitor.
Smartphone sales numbers in the fourth quarter of the year 2020 look like the top brands were playing musical chairs. As Gartner shows, All five of the top brands in smartphone sales worldwide changed places year-over-year. Back in Q4 2019, Samsung was the leader, followed by Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, and OPPO. At the tail end of 2020, Huawei fell to 5th place, and Apple moved to first, followed by Samsung, Xiaomi, and OPPO in-between.
Huawei has revealed its newest foldable phone, with the Huawei Mate X2 promising a bigger display in a sleeker form-factor, with all the eye-catching promise of the next-generation design. Gone is the old Mate X's outer display design, which wrapped around the exterior of the handset. In its place is an internally-folding 8-inch panel.
Huawei has reportedly slashed its smartphone production targets for 2021, stung by US sanctions that show no sign of alleviating even with the change in American President. The Chinese behemoth had been on a rising trajectory, both with flagship handsets in the Mate and Pro series and much more affordable fare for the budget market, but the US entity list put a stop to that.
It’s been a while since the launch of Samsung Galaxy Z Fold2 - arguably the best foldable smartphone yet – therefore there is a void in the foldable phone market which Huawei is planning to fill up soon. There is a confirmation that Huawei is going to announce its new flagship foldable smartphone on February 22. The information was made public through a teaser poster on the company’s official Weibo page.
The transition to the Biden administration may have sparked some hope in Huawei but, if recent news is any indication, it might still be fighting a losing battle. Biden's pick to lead the Commerce Department already indicated her stance on keeping the status quo. Huawei is now picking up another fight in a different arena, this time challenging once more the constitutionality of the FCC's recent decision to label Huawei as a threat to the national security of the US.
The change in the US political landscape will naturally send ripples through all aspects of the country's life and business, especially those more contentious policies and views that Donald Trump left behind. Some of those have already been reversed while others remained. Naturally, that also gave some companies recently added to the country's dreaded Entity List a bit of hope for a reprieve. Unfortunately for Huawei and other Chinese company's on that list, President Joe Biden's pick for the Commerce Department isn't that keen on changing the status quo.
Huawei will be launching another foldable phone this month, that much is already established. Whether there will be a market to receive it warmly is, however, still uncertain. Few details about the Huawei Mate X2 are available and those that are disappointingly point to what may be a Galaxy Z Fold 2 clone. The latest piece of the unofficial puzzle to fall in place, however, turns the table on Samsung, making the Mate X2 foldable phone potentially more interesting if not better than Samsung's take.
It's probably not a stretch to say that Samsung has, at least for now, cornered the nascent foldable market. Royole' FlexPai is generally unavailable in most markets and Motorola has gone silent almost completely on the Razr. Samsung's closest rival would have been Huawei, had it not been too busy with more critical concerns. That said, it seems that the embattled Chinese company still has a bit more to give and it will be announcing its next-gen foldable phone in just a few weeks.
To say that Huawei is desperately trying to survive in the middle of a US sanction is probably not an understatement. From its networking business to its smartphones, the Chinese company's future precariously hangs in the balance of a new US political landscape. They say desperate times call for desperate measures and it sounds like Huawei's Harmony OS is one such bold move but it is turning out to be one deceptive affair instead.
Huawei's much-vaunted HarmonyOS, the Android-replacing operating system it plans to use as a workaround to its placement on the US trade block list, isn't quite the masterpiece of in-house development the company claims, a new beta deep-dive has revealed. The Chinese electronics giant has faced an uphill struggle in phones, smart home tech, and other devices over the past year or so, after being placed on the US entity list preventing it from doing business with American companies.