Strategy Analytics has released the figures for the third quarter of the year of 5G smartphones shipped in Europe: Xiaomi's performance is incredible
The latest findings from the expert analysts at Strategy Analytics highlight just how volatile habits that seem like they should last forever can actually be. The pocket technology sector is evolving at a frantic pace, and the market and its shares are moving at the same pace.
Colossi of the caliber of Apple and Samsung may have seemed unbeatable, but they have been overtaken by a company that has been living in a sort of golden age for a few years now. It is Xiaomi, which in the statistics for the penultimate quarter of 2021 of the analysis company has highlighted a performance in Europe more than relevant in comparison with the same period a year ago, which takes on even greater relevance when you consider how much the crisis of chips is impacting on any sector that needs technology, including cars. Behind Xiaomi, respectively, Apple and Samsung - the latter in sharp decline.
Xiaomi and Realme in Europe
The success of Xiaomi in the Old Continent has been confirmed by the analysts of the company Strategy Analytics. According to their calculations, the Beijing-based company in the third quarter of the year is the first for shipments of smartphones with 5G connectivity in the central and eastern areas of Europe. To occupy the first place means to put oneself behind seemingly unbeatable giants of the caliber of Apple and Samsung, and that's no small thing.
Specially if you do it, as Xiaomi has done, with an impressive market share that amounts to 41.8%: in fact, almost every second 5G smartphone delivered to European retailers bears the brand of the Chinese company. The number is relevant in itself, but it acquires more - a lot more - if you take a look at the percentage that Xiaomi enjoyed a year ago: not even 5% of the market, 4.3% to be precise. According to analysts, there are all the prerequisites for Xiaomi to begin 2022 as the leader of the sector in Central and Eastern Europe.
Second in the ranking drawn up by the experts of Strategy Analytics is Apple with 26% of the European market, driven by the public's considerable appreciation for the iPhone 12 line, while waiting to see how the recent iPhone 13 range will be received and consequently how much they will sell.
Closing the podium is Samsung with a market share of 11.5%, largely reduced - unlike Apple - by sales below expectations of the Galaxy S21 line: a year ago in Seoul in the third quarter of the year they celebrated 34.3% of the European market. Remarkable performance of Realme, fourth with 7.9% of the 5G smartphone market in Europe, in light of 0.9% a year earlier.
Because we talk about shipments and not sales
It may seem strange that we talk about smartphone shipments and not pure sales, but it is enormously easier to get to the number of products that have left the production plants than to approach the issue by taking sales into account.
After all, it's safe to assume that retailers order about as many smartphones from companies as they sell, so the number of products shipped from factories to retailers should be roughly similar to the number of products actually sold to customers.