Huawei is now the third largest mobile phone maker in the world, according to new quarterly shipment statistics from Strategy Analytics.
The Chinese firm has overtaken Microsoft, shipping almost 3 million more handsets than the U.S. firm in the three months to the end of June.
Huawei shipped 30.6 million mobile phones in calendar Q2, giving it a 7% share of the global market. It remains some way behind market leader Samsung and number two player Apple; while Samsung saw its shipments and market share decline, Apple grew on both counts.
Samsung shipped 89 million devices in Q2, more than 6 million fewer than in the year ago quarter, reducing its market share to 20.5% from 22.3%. Apple increased shipments to 47.5 million from 35.2 million and its market share grew to 10.2%.
Now languishing in fourth place in the table, Microsoft’s figures made for grim reading; the firm shipped 27.8 million handsets, down from 50.3 million in Q2 last year.
"Microsoft’s 6% global mobile phone market share is sitting near an all-time low," said Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics.
"Microsoft continues to lose ground in feature phones, while its Lumia smartphone portfolio is in a holding pattern awaiting the launch of new Windows 10 models later this year," he added.
Indeed, Microsoft is relegated to the ‘others’ category in Strategy Analytics’ latest smartphone figures, also published on Thursday.
The top three players in the smartphone market match the analyst firm’s overall mobile phone market rankings, with leader Samsung again losing market share and Apple gaining.
"Huawei moved up to third position with a record 9% global smartphone market share in Q2 2015," said Woody Oh, director at Strategy Analytics. "Huawei is expanding rapidly across Asia, Europe and North America, putting competitive pressure on key rivals such as Samsung, Xiaomi, Lenovo, LG, Sony and Alcatel."
According to Oh, Xiaomi recaptured fourth spot, with 19.8 million smartphone shipments giving it a 5.8% market share. Lenovo-Motorola came in fifth with 4.8%.
"Xiaomi has good distribution channels and competitive pricing in its large home market of China, enabling it to stay in front o f Lenovo-Motorola [which] is struggling with the transition from 3G to 4G smartphones in China and the United States," Oh said.
Xiaomi ranks fifth in terms of overall mobile phone shipments, but it faces a tough future.
"Xiaomi remains a major player in the China mobile phone market, but its local and international growth is slowing and Xiaomi is facing intense competition from Huawei, Meizu and others," Mawston warned. "As a result, Xiaomi may struggle to hold on to its top-five global mobile phone ranking in the coming quarters."
The total number of mobile phones shipped in Q2 reached 434.6 million, up just 2% year-on-year.
That growth rate marks "the industry’s weakest performance for two years, due to slowing demand for handsets in China, Europe and the U.S.," Oh said.
Smartphone shipments accounted for 339.5 million of the total, an increase of 15%. However, that represented the market’s slowest growth rate for six years.
"Smartphone growth is slowing due to increasing penetration maturity in major markets of the U.S., Europe and China," explained Linda Sui, another director at Strategy Analytics. "Smartphones will need a design transformation to revitalise growth in the future, such as foldable or rollable displays," she suggested.
