The new coronavirus outbreak caused Samsung shipments to plummet, as a result, less affected Huawei may overtake it as the world's No. 1 in the second quarter.
South Korea's SK Securities predicted that from April to June Huawei's mobile phone shipments may stand at 55 million units. And Samsung's shipments will be 51 million units, lower than Huawei.
Market research data showed that in April-May this year, Samsung's smartphone shipments fell about 40% year-on-year, to about 30 million units. Although the figures rebounded in June, the overall second quarter was still down about 30%.
Samsung's share of the Chinese smartphone market is currently less than 1%, while Huawei is over 40%.
In this epidemic, China restarted its economy earlier than Europe and the United States, and there was no massive secondary outbreak, which resulted in Samsung's sales gap with Huawei.
Over the past few years, Samsung has maintained its 300 million smartphone shipments per year, making it the world's No. 1 smartphone shipper.
This year is a tough year for global smartphone manufacturers. In June IDC forecast that by 2020, the world smartphone Shipments will be down 12% year-on-year, the sharpest decline in history.