With Apple bumped down to the third position, Huawei’s smartphone sales grew 38.6%  to 49,8 million for the second quarter of 2018 in the latest smartphone sales report from analyst firm Gartner.

The report reveals that overall, global sales of smartphones to end users grew 2% in the second quarter of 2018 to reach 374 million units.

Apple’s performance was flat in the second quarter of 2018 (0.9% growth).

“Huawei continues to bring innovative features into its smartphones and expand its smartphone portfolio to cover larger consumer segments," said Gartner research director Anshul Gupta.

"Its investment into channels, brand building and positioning of the Honor devices helped drive sales. Huawei is shipping its Honor smartphones into 70 markets worldwide and is emerging as Huawei’s key growth driver."

Gupta said minimal incremental value in Apple's current-generation flagship iPhones led to slower growth in the second quarter.

“Demand for the iPhone X has started to slow down much earlier than when other new models were introduced," he said.

"Growing competition from Chinese brands and consumers’ greater expectations for phone value is putting immense pressure on Apple to deliver enhanced value on their premium iPhones to foster growth."

Gartner says Chinese vendor Xiaomi’s focus on expanding its portfolio and adopting a unified retail model by integrating offline and online retail is also driving growth in a slowing global smartphone market – helping the company to secure the No. 4 spot in the worldwide smartphone market in the second quarter.

While Huawei and Apple traded positions, Samsung kept the top spot, despite declining 12.7% in the second quarter of 2018, with sales of 72,3 million units for the quarter.

On Samsung, Gupta says the vendor faces “slowing global smartphone demand and ever-growing competition from Chinese manufacturers”.

"The slowing demand for its flagship smartphones left Samsung with lower profitability. It now expects the Note 9 smartphone to revive growth."

In the smartphone operating system (OS) market, Gartner reports that Google’s Android further extended its lead over Apple’s iOS in the second quarter of 2018, securing 88% marketshare to 11.9% share for iOS.

Statistics: courtesy Gartner