Huawei retained its place as the world’s second largest smartphone maker in the second quarter, behind Samsung Electronics, despite the US government’s crackdown on the Chinese company, which began in May.

According to analyst firm Gartner, among the top five global smartphone vendors, Huawei and Samsung exhibited the strongest annual sales increases in the second quarter of 2019 at 16.5% and 3.8% respectively.

“As a result, they both grew market share in the quarter, which led them to account for more than a third of total smartphone sales globally,” Gartner said.

Huawei’s growth came despite a sharp decline in smartphone sales for the company in the second quarter, though Gartner said sales “did improve slightly” on the deferment of a US ban on the company working with American suppliers.

“While its smartphone sales total was weaker globally, strong promotion and brand positioning helped Huawei sell a record number of smartphones in greater China in the quarter, growing 31% in the region,” said Gartner senior research director Anshul Gupta.

Global sales of smartphones to end users declined by 1.7% in the second quarter of 2019, totalling 368 million units, the company said.

Apple, the third largest smartphone maker, continued to suffer from a decline in sales. Sales of iPhones continued to decline year over year, although at a lesser rate compared with the first quarter of 2019.

iPhone in decline

“Apple sold just over 38 million iPhones in the second quarter, a 13.8% decline year over year. Too few incremental benefits are preventing existing iPhone users from replacing their smartphones,” said Gupta. “Apple has reached an inflection point marked by shifting its business toward services, which represented 21% of the vendor’s total revenue in the first quarter of 2019.”

Samsung sold over 75 million smartphones in the second quarter and grew its market share by 1.1 percentage points year over year. “Strong demand for Samsung’s new Galaxy A-series smartphones and the revamp of its entire entry-level and midrange smartphone range helped this positive performance,” said Gupta. “Demand for Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S10 started to weaken during the quarter, however, indicating that achieving growth in 2019 as a whole will be a challenge.”