Huawei expects to ship 200 million smartphones in 2018, aims to overtake Apple

Standing half-way closer to its aim of overtaking Apple’s annual handset shipments, **Huawei** ’s mobile segment chief Richard Yu Chengdong announced that as of July 2018, the company has shipped 100 million handsets. The company has reached the halfway mark and should outpace Apple in terms of smartphone sales. For a few consecutive years, **Apple** has been the second-largest smartphone vendor globally, after **Samsung** . While this is good news for Huawei, this must be tempered by the fact that Apple sells premium handsets while Huawei’s offerings cater to a wider audience. Regardless, this is the first time that Huawei has reached the 100 million mark so fast in a year. “Previously Huawei reached the 100 million shipments mark on December 22, 2015, October 14, 2016 and September 12, 2017. As it’s only taken just over six months to reach the target this year, we are now aiming for shipments of 200 million units by the end of 2018,” Sout****h C****hina Morning Post reported Yu as saying. [caption id=“attachment_4341357” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”]  Huawei logo. Reuters[/caption] To put these numbers in perspective, Huawei reportedly shipped 153.1 million handsets in 2017, which wasn’t nearly enough to top Apple’s 215.8 million shipments the same year. However, with its 200 million target, With its 200 mn target for the end of the year, Huawei could finally take over the number two spot in smartphone shipments. That being said, Apple’s new phones are expected in September, and despite a slow start to the year, one can expect things to pick up on that front. Huawei totals the global mobile shipments of both Huawei and Honor. And despite the slowing number of shipments globally, the company has maintained an upward pace in terms of its sales. Reportedly, Samsung and Apple, have reported declines in shipments of 2.4 percent and 2.8 percent respectively in the first quarter of 2018. At the same time, according to a report for the last quarter by IDC, Huawei has shipped a total of 39.3 million handsets during the first three months, edging closer to Apple’s 52.2 million over the same period.