With an extraordinary performance compared to 2020, Xiaomi surpasses Apple and puts Samsung in its sights: Canalys’ snapshot of Q2 2021
There are no numbers certifying the sales achieved by each brand or group of brands in the Canalys report, but the percentages are enough to highlight Xiaomi’s surpassing of Apple. Probably not even the Xiaomi people themselves believed that they could overtake Apple and get within a step of Samsung, but they did it.
Years of work, expansive moves and, of course, bold and quality products have allowed Xiaomi (Redmi, Poco and BlackShark, which are all part of the same group) to overtake Apple with an incredible +83% growth compared to the same period in 2020, when the world was faced with a hitherto unknown threat. From there on, everything changed, including evidently the future of Xiaomi, which restarted more intensely than before. The Canalys report, it’s good to say, gives somewhat provisional verdicts: however accurate they may be, they are still estimates, which will then have to be confirmed by the final calculations and numbers.
The incredible growth of Xiaomi
The Canalys document analyzes worldwide smartphone shipments, hence reflexively sales, in the second quarter of the year, i.e. in the period from April to June 2021. And in the year-on-year comparison, i.e. over the same period in 2020, no brand grew more than the Xiaomi Group, which put up an incredible +83%.
In terms of growth, therefore, no one has done as well as the Xiaomi group and no one has even come close to that performance: Oppo is chasing with a +28%, but the distance is huge and more than thinking about how to catch Xiaomi, it should look at Vivo, except that the latter is part of the Chinese group BBK Electronics which includes Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, Realme and brands almost unknown to us like iQOO.
So if we exclude Vivo, Oppo can sleep soundly in terms of growth since Samsung has shown a relatively normal rate (+15%) while Apple is in line with the second quarter of last year (+1%).
Xiaomi is now aiming for the top
The real news, however, is that according to preliminary data from Canalys on Q2 2021 Apple would no longer be the second manufacturer in the world but the third, due to the overtaking of Xiaomi. Overtaking very well executed, it must be said: there are 3 percentage points of difference between the two companies in terms of share, and it seems difficult that Apple can recover in the short term especially if it is to do so against a company that year after year grows with staggering percentages.
Judging from the Canalys “snapshot” and taking into account only Q2 2021, it bears repeating, but Xiaomi (and the rest of the group) is at this point in the position of having to look more at Samsung than Apple, therefore more at the top of the ranking than at the shoulders for fear of losing the second place.
Yes because the top is “just” two percentage points away, and despite Samsung being a tough nut Xiaomi in recent years has shown with a scary growth to have almost no limits. So keep an eye on Samsung: Xiaomi has just arrived.