The smartphone business is not for the faint hearted and the weak, as it has claimed the prosperity of many companies.
However, it also flourished a number of others. And Xiaomi is one of them.
After becoming the second largest smartphone maker for the first time, after it surpassed Apple and coming second only to Samsung, the Chinese company is again making another milestone.
And that is finally topping its South Korean rival to become the largest smartphone manufacturer by shipment.
According to a report from Counterpoint Research that is based on June 2021 sales, it is suggested that Xiaomi sold more phones in June than any other manufacturers in the world.
Xiaomi's sales grew 26% compared to the previous month, giving the company a 17.1% share of the total number of smartphones sold globally in June. Xiaomi’s sales grew 26% month-on-month compared to May 2021.
Counterpoint added that Samsung and Apple sold 15.7% and 14.3% of the total handsets for the same period, respectively.
For years, top rivals like Apple and Samsung have faced a lot of pressure from Xiaomi.
As a company that was just founded in 2011, Xiaomi has been a strong competitor in the market.
Over the years, Xiaomi CEO had mentioned multiple times that it wanted to defeat Samsung and become the number one smartphone brand in the world.
And this time, the company has finally achieved that long-standing goal.
“Ever since the decline of Huawei commenced, Xiaomi has been making consistent and aggressive efforts to fill the gap created by this decline. The OEM has been expanding in Huawei’s and HONOR’s legacy markets like China, Europe, Middle East and Africa. In June, Xiaomi was further helped by China, Europe and India’s recovery and Samsung’s decline due to supply constraints,” said Tarun Pathak, Research Director at Counterpoint Research.
In 2020, Samsung won big time, since it witnessed a prolonged year, saw Huawei and some others leaving the market, and experiencing the demise of LG.
But these quickly left room for Xiaomi to grow.
However, Counterpoint analysts explained that Xiaomi in becoming number one could be temporary.
Samsung's struggle happened following a surge of COVID-19 'coronavirus' cases in Vietnam that may have disrupted its supply chain. There was a shortage of Galaxy smartphones (especially Galaxy A series devices) across online and offline channels in various markets.
Samsung is expected to bounce back once it manages to solve supply chain issues.
What's more, Samsung is a lot larger than Xiaomi, and it's sitting on a larger pile of resources, with more product varieties than Xiaomi.
At this time, Xiaomi remains the top player in India, which is one of the world's fastest-growing smartphone markets, and the company is still aiming at the mass market, which is shy from high-end products.
Since its inception, Xiaomi has sold close to 800 million smartphones.
The company now has a global smartphone revenue share of 9%. In comparison, Apple has a global smartphone revenue share of 41% and Samsung 15%.
