We believe this is the first time a Chinese company tops the list. In a report from Strategy Analytics on European cellphone sales during the second quarter of this year, Xiaomi surpassed Samsung and topped all vendors with a 25.3% market share.
Xiaomi has sold 67 percent more units, while its main competitor Samsung has now dropped to second place, lost seven percent of its sales. In Europe, Xiaomi and Samsung have sold respectively 12.7 and 12 million phones in the second quarter of 2021. Apple ranked third place, with a market share of 19.2 percent and a sales increase of just over 15 percent. Oppo and Realme follow in fourth and fifth, the latter with a nineteen-fold increase in sales – from 100,000 to 1.9 million units. In total, these five players accounted for 80 percent of a total of 50 million telephones sold in Europe in the second quarter.
Xiaomi is doing particularly well in Russia, Ukraine, Italy, and Spain within Europe. Xiaomi claims that it is the second-most popular brand in Italy, third in France, fourth in Germany, and has been Spain’s preferred smartphone brand for the last three quarters. Xiaomi sales increased by 107% in western Europe, contributed significantly to revenue growth. On the global stage, Xiaomi’s performance was also quite impressive, it replaced Apple in second place just behind Samsung with a formidable growth of 83 percent last quarter.
The main reason for Xiaomi’s sales boosts and success in the European market is the absence of Huawei. Google canceled the license for Huawei to use its Google Mobile Service (GMS) after Huawei was listed in US-issued Entity List in 2019. So now Huawei’s users can’t use Google services like YouTube and Google Maps.
