Huawei has done it again, beating the odds and reclaiming its top spot in the Chinese smartphone market with a narrow win over Apple in 2025.
Market researcher IDC has shared a new report for Q4 2025 and the full-year basis, revealing that the Chinese tech giant has maintained a steady growth throughout the last year.
Huawei sold 46.7 million devices in 2025, capturing 16.4% market share of the annual shipments, compared to the 47.6 million shipments and 16.6% market share in 2024, which is a 1.9% year over year growth drop.
Apple follows in the close second with a 46.2 million unit shipment, 16.2% market share in 2025, with a 4% YOY growth over 2024. Vivo, Xiaomi, and Oppo occupied third, fourth, and fifth places, respectively, with the following figures.
- Vivo – 46.1 million shipments, 16.2% market share, 6.6% YOY decline
- Xiaomi – 43.8 million shipments, 15.4% market share, 4.3% YOY growth
- OPPO – 43.4 million shipments, 15.2% market share, 2.1% YOY growth
Huawei beats Apple to reclaim top spot in Chinese smartphone market in 2025 (Source – IDC)
Huawei’s 2025
The past year was quite successful for Huawei; it was full of innovative product launches, including the new foldable notebook, new Nova-series smartphones, Pura 80 series, Mate 80 series, and more. These devices come with new technologies and camera features, but the spotlight was captured by the chip breakthrough.
These products couldn’t become a reality without Huawei’s chip consumption, which the company is reportedly taking from the homegrown companion – SMIC.
By using a little backward chipset processing technology, Huawei’s software and hardware optimizations have enabled a performance upgrade in the latest Kirin 9030 chipset over the previous generation.
Will Wong, senior research manager for client devices at IDC, has praised the improvement in Huawei’s in-house chip production, which remained the star of the show in 2025.
Despite paying a high cost for its chipset production, the company was still able to generate revenue from its consumer business group in 2025. This has enabled the company to break through the sales barrier with new launches and keep its schedule on track with rival Apple in China.
Meanwhile, Huawei continues to find new ways to diversify its supply chain and make use of its home-grown solution and suppliers to make new devices.
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