In Q4 2018, Huawei beat industry average (down -6% YoY) and significantly grow its smartphone shipments by +48% YoY. Meanwhile, its smartphone wholesale revenue also went up +75% YoY. Huawei is the biggest winner from the collapse of second tier and micro-vendors in China. Meanwhile, it gained strong momentum in all the regions except North America.

Its product lifting strategy has started to pay dividends, indicated by its improved smartphone ASP and the increasing portion of Nova series and premium P series and Mate series in its portfolio. Huawei further solidified the leadership in US$300-500 price tier.

We expect Huawei to overtake Apple in 2019 by annual volume. Compared with Apple, Huawei has several advantages, including more comprehensive product portfolio covering multiple price tiers, favoured branding in China, and stronger growth potential in India, and other emerging markets.

However, we caution Huawei to carefully manage the increasing political headwinds in western world, the saturate home market China, and the higher inventories.

Our latest report Q4 ’18: Huawei: Product Lifting Paid Dividends has been published. WSS clients could access the report from here.