Samsung appoints new mobile chief as Huawei advances to bag first position in 5G phone market

The smartphone industry is shaping up to be a two-horse race. Or, maybe three. In 2019, three OEMs; Apple, Samsung, and Huawei accounted for over 50% of the smartphones sold worldwide.

Since Apple still hasn’t produced a 5G phone (as yet, who knows what’s coming in future), the race in the 5G phone market is a close call between the Chinese OEM, Huawei, and the Korean giant, Samsung. But who is winning? Between Samsung and Huawei, who has sold more 5G-enabled phones?

Well, on January 3, Samsung announced that it sold 6.7 million units of its 5G enabled phones in the year 2019. In a quick rejoinder, Huawei on January 15 announced that it had sold 6.9 million 5G phones in the same period, therefore taking the crown from Samsung.

And now to compete with their Chinese counterpart Huawei, Samsung has been pouring resources into their equipment business, aiming to capitalize on the security fears hobbling market leader Huawei.

The Korean tech giant has in fact appointed a new Mobile chief. Samsung appointed Roh Tae-moon, currently their youngest-ever president at 51, as mobile chief as part of a management reshuffle.

“The young executive is known to be decisive and so is likely to respond swiftly to that change to defend Samsung’s lead from Huawei.”
-Tom Kang, an analyst at Counterpoint.

In his former position as Mobile Development Head, it is reported that Roh is the man behind Samsung’s shift to outsourcing more handset production to cut costs and better compete with lower-priced Chinese smartphone makers such as Huawei.

According to the latest data ,from Counterpoint Samsung held a 21% market share in the third quarter of 2019, but Huawei closed in with 18%.

Despite the many milestones that the new standard has made, 5G is still in its infancy. Only a few first-world markets like the US, Korea and some nations in Europe support 5G networks. 5G phones are however being launched by the day.

FYI Samsung has the following 5G-enabled phones: Galaxy S10 5G, the Galaxy Note 10, the Galaxy A90 5G and the Galaxy Fold. Huawei’s catalog includes the Mate20X 5G, the Mate30 5G, and the MateX 5G. Certainly not an extensive list, but is expected to change going into 2020.

PiunikaWeb started as purely an investigative tech journalism website with main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.