Telecom
Smartphone Shipments Dip by 6.6% in Q1 2019, As Samsung and Huawei Maintain Lead
Global smart phone shipment dipped by 6.6% year over year, during the first quarter of 2019 (1Q19), according to preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.
Smartphone vendors shipped a total of 310.8 million units in 1Q19, which marked the sixth consecutive quarter of decline.
In 2018, smartphone shipments dropped 4.1% over 2017, which was inclusive of a first quarter that was down 3.5% – just half of what the market experienced in 1Q19.
This quarter’s results are a clear sign that 2019 will be another down year for worldwide smartphone shipments.
The only highlight from a vendor perspective was Huawei, which made a strong statement by growing volume and share despite market headwinds.
Ryan Reith, program vice president with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers, said “It is becoming increasingly clear that Huawei is laser focused on growing its stature in the world of mobile devices, with smartphones being its lead horse.
“The overall smartphone market continues to be challenged in almost all areas, yet Huawei was able to grow shipments by 50%, not only signifying a clear number two in terms of market share but also closing the gap on the market leader Samsung.
“This new ranking of Samsung, Huawei, and Apple is very likely what we’ll see when 2019 is all said and done.”
From a geographic standpoint, while the China market will likely be challenged for the remainder of 2019, it was the U.S. market that felt the worst of the downturn in 1Q19.
Smartphone volumes declined 15% year over year during the quarter as replacement rates continue to slow in one of the world’s largest markets.
Apple iPhone challenges contributed to the exceptionally poor 1Q19 in the U.S., but they were not alone as Samsung, LG, and other top vendors also witnessed declining volumes during the quarter.
Anthony Scarsella, research manager with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, said “The less than stellar first quarter in the United States can be attributed to the continued slowdown we are witnessing at the high end of the market.
“Consumers continue to hold on to their phones longer than before as newer higher priced models offer little incentive to shell out top dollar to upgrade.
“Moreover, the pending arrival of 5G handsets could have consumers waiting until both the networks and devices are ready for prime time in 2020.”
Highlights of Smartphone Company shows that Samsung saw volumes drop 8.1% in 1Q19 with shipments of 71.9 million.
The results were enough to keep Samsung in the top spot of the market, but Huawei is continuing to close the gap between the two smartphone leaders.
Despite challenging earnings in terms of profits, Samsung did say that the recently launched Galaxy S10 series did sell well during the quarter.
With the 5G variant now launched in its home market of Korea and plans to bring this device and other 5G SKUs to other important markets in 2019, it will be equally crucial for Samsung not to lose focus on its mid-tier product strategy to fend off Huawei.
Huawei moved its way into a clear number two spot as the only smartphone vendor at the top of the market that saw volumes grow during 1Q19.
Impressively, the company had year-over-year growth of 50.3% in 1Q19 with volumes of 59.1 million units and a 19.0% market share.
Huawei is now within striking distance of Samsung at the top of the global market. In China, Huawei continued its positive momentum with a well-rounded portfolio targeting all segments from low to high.
Huawei’s high-end models continued to create a strong affiliation for the mid to low-end models, which are supporting the company’s overall shipment performance.
Apple had a challenging first quarter as shipments dropped to 36.4 million units representing a staggering 30.2% decline from last year.
The iPhone struggled to win over consumers in most major markets as competitors continue to eat away at Apple’s market share.
Price cuts in China throughout the quarter along with favorable trade-in deals in many markets were still not enough to encourage consumers to upgrade.
Combine this with the fact that most competitors will shortly launch 5G phones and new foldable devices, the iPhone could face a difficult remainder of the year.
Despite the lackluster quarter, Apple’s strong installed base along with its recent agreement with Qualcomm will be viewed as the light at the end of the tunnel heading into 2020 for the Cupertino-based giant.
Xiaomi also experienced a decline in 1Q19 with volumes of 25.0 million, which was down 10.2% year over year. Despite its continued movement into Europe and other regions, Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) remains its most important region with China, India, and Indonesia accounting for the bulk of its volume in the region.
Of those three critical markets, India was the only country in Asia/Pacific where Xiaomi grew its shipments during the quarter.
Its brand continues to build out in many markets including India as it continues its push beyond urban markets and into rural areas of India.
vivo returned to the top 5 of the smartphone market with volumes of 23.2 million and a market share of 7.5%, tying* it with OPPO for the number 5 position.
Other than Huawei, vivo was the only other vendor at the top of the market that was able to grow shipments in 1Q19 with volumes up 24.0% over 1Q18.
India continues to be its most important market outside of China, and the company continues to invest substantial money on marketing with the Indian Premier League for Cricket being a prime example of these investments.
OPPO was tied* with vivo in terms of market share, although slightly behind in terms of overall shipment volumes.
OPPO shipped 23.1 million smartphones in 1Q19, enough to capture a 7.4% market share, although volumes were down 6.0% from 1Q18.
The recent announcement of the Reno series brought OPPO back to the forefront of the global smartphone innovation discussion.
However, lower end models like the A series continue to drive most of its smartphone volumes.
Renowned digital innovation expert, Prof. Chris Uwaje, has celebrated Leo Stan Ekeh as a visionary “digital anticipator” and pioneer on the occasion of his 70th birthday.
Leo Stan Ekeh
In a heartfelt tribute, Uwaje hailed Ekeh as the “Saint Leo of all Stars from the Ekeh Universe,” saluting his masterclass contributions to human innovation, development, and global youth empowerment.
Visionary Impact on Africa, World
Uwaje praised Ekeh’s foresight, emotional intelligence, and resilience in transforming digital entrepreneurship, creating millions of jobs, billions in economic value, and expanded education access worldwide.
The encomium spotlighted Ekeh’s trailblazing solutions driving sustainable development, employment, and economic growth across Africa and beyond.
“Your legacy continues to shape a brighter future,” Uwaje noted, adding that Ekeh’s “extraordinary best is yet to come” as the “Field-Marshall of ANTICIPATORS.”
Cheers to More Foresighted Legacy
Uwaje declared: “From the gaze into the digital cloud: ‘the world ain’t seen nothing yet’!” while toasting Ekeh as the “true digital Conqueror of Africa and the world.”
The tribute underscores Ekeh’s enduring influence in digital disruption, innovation, and youth-focused initiatives that continue to inspire global progress.
Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria is positioning as a regional Internet Exchange hub for West Africa in terms of infrastructure and traffic. Muhammed Rudman, chief executive officer, IXPN, stated this at its 2026 members engagement forum held in Lagos. He noted some of the major milestone IXPN achieved last year to include one terabit of traffic recorded in March 2025.
“At that time, we became the 63rd internet exchange point in the world. Among all the exchanges in Europe and America and in the entire world, we become the number 63 in the world. To achieve that one terabit of traffic. Again, we were able to achieve two terabits of traffic within seven, eight months of the year.
“We achieve this by ensuring that we push for members to upgrade, those that were on 1 Gig to 10 Gig, those on 10 Gig to 100 Gig. We had a strategic infrastructure upgrade across our networks, put 400 Gig enable switches, increase our fiber links to all the data centers and we onboarded 17 new members last year. All the trainings and the operational excellence ensured that our network is up and running 24/7,” he said.
Industry Impact
The impact of that one terabit traffic is data sovereignty. “We were able to domesticate. Based on the survey we conducted, 54% of our members said that they are exchanging 50% of their traffic and above locally, which is really, significant one.
“We are also setting up a benchmark for other African IXPs. I can assure you that in all the community driven internet exchange points in Africa, we are the number one. There’s a community driven internet exchange point in South Africa that was established 10 years before IXPN. There is one in Kenya that was established 6 years before IXPN, but we are way ahead of them when it comes to internet traffic.
“We are also promoting intra African connectivity. As at today, we have customers from Niger, from, Burkina Faso, trying to reach to Nigeria. Recently, we onboarded a very large company in Ivory Coast, to connect to Nigeria.
“Gradually, Nigeria is tilting towards becoming the regional hub for West Africa, where you see Internet Service Providers coming to achieve that. And in terms of the traffic, in 2015 we were at four Gigabits per second. It moves to 21 in 2017 and 52 gigabits per second.
“But by the year 2023 it has reached 540 gigabits. By 2024 we have reached 900 gigabits. But by the end of 2025 we have achieved the two terabits of traffic”.
Network Infrastructure Development
Some of the technical feet IXPN achieved includes, deployment of sFlow; which is a peer to peer traffic analysis. “We’re able to see what members are exchanging between themselves and between the data centers, not the actual content or information, but rather the volume of traffic, and also between our data centers. And based on this, we’re able to do the upgrades.
“We did a multiple link upgrades from 300 Gigabits last year from Digital Realty to Equinix. It was 300 Gig as at the end of 2024, and by 2025, we’ve increased that to 500 gigabits per second. Digital Realty to Rack Center, it was 200 Gigabits per second. We also upgraded that to 500 Gigabits per second.
Open Access Data Centre to Equinix. We’ve upgraded from 20 Gigabits per second to 200 Gigabits per second. We always monitor the ports, and based on that, we increase immediately we reach the threshold of 80%.
“We did an upgrade on the IXP manager. This allows each member to have a login portal to see the traffic they are exchanging and other details, the port as well as to do their own configuration,” he added.
Technical Project Milestones
Microsoft connected cache. “We deployed Microsoft content cache and that has been deployed in Lagos. It was 25 Gigabits per second as of 2024 by 2025 we had to upgrade the infrastructure to 75 Gigabits per second servers, that will be able to accommodate all the Microsoft updates they are doing, exports, download and among others.
“This is part of the content that Microsoft is not providing locally, but we got those servers deployed, and our intention is by next year to see how we can replicate this across the country. Last year, we also deployed the same server in Abuja so that the Abuja people and the Kano people can reach that content without coming back to Lagos.
The Google Global Cache (GGC); “We are hosting all these at IXPN. We also upgraded from 53 Gigabits per second servers in 2024 to 153 Gigabits per second. And this is a huge traffic of YouTube. And as we speak, we are also working towards upgrading those servers,” he explained.
Strategic Partnerships
“We signed an MoU last year between us and an IXP in Senegal, when we went for West African peering forum. A lot of African ISPs are looking to us to see how we can guide them and support them.
“For example, internet exchange point from Gabon, internet exchange point from Rwanda and ISPs in Africa are looking at us as a model to copy, and we tend to support them. We also had a strategic partnership with CIRA, the Canada Internet Registry Association, which is similar to Nira, the Nigerian Internet Registration Association, to have their secondary authoritative servers into Nigeria as an anycast instance. And when they are hosting that, they are hosting other top-level domains as well, like alibaba.info.org.ca, are also hosted with us.
“Since they launched last year, we have seen a traffic of over 1000 DNS responses per second. Presently, there are 13 global root servers in the world, and those 13 servers are the ones that translate your IP address into a domain name. Any website you browse, you put a domain name, it translates into an IP address and its chain of referrals, Nigeria has.ng as a country, called Top Level Domain”.
Earlier in his welcome address, Charles Nmeregini, Business Development Manager, IXPN, said that the members engagement forum is more than an annual country. “Today, we pause to celebrate the milestone, the milestone that we have reached together, the milestone that have bolstered our local traffic exchange, reduce latency and significantly lower the cost of Internet access across the nations and beyond.
“However, today is equally about the horizon. It is a strategic moment as we unveil our 2026 service road map, a forward-looking rubbing designed to deepen interconnection, enhance service delivery and unlock new value across the ecosystem. In an era defined by rapid technological shift, standing still is not an option.
“This forum will spotlight exclusive, strategic business opportunities, new avenues for growth, enhanced pairing capabilities and innovative service model tailored to give your organization a competitive edge. We are not just exchanging data, we are exchanging ideas that will drive the next wave of Nigeria digital economy,” he added.
In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, having a trusted and reputable IT partner is no longer optional—it’s essential. Consumers and businesses alike face numerous challenges: buying smartphones, tablets, and laptops that are substandard or incompatible, worrying about device security, and struggling with costly repairs when gadgets break down.
Menxtt NG
This is where Menxtt NG stands out as a true industry leader, providing EU-specification devices, nationwide service, and unmatched support across Nigeria.
As an official BitDefender reseller, Menxtt NG ensures that every device comes fortified with premium cybersecurity solutions. This addresses one of the biggest issues consumers face today: digital threats. With Menxtt NG, customers don’t just get a gadget—they get peace of mind knowing their data and devices are protected.
Beyond security, the company solves a critical problem in tech ownership: the lack of reliable warranties and repair services. Many users find themselves forced to buy new devices due to broken phones, laptops, or tablets.
Menxtt NG addresses this by offering repair services for all major gadgets, saving customers significant money while extending the life of their devices. And for new devices, they provide fully tested EU-spec phones, laptops, and tablets with a 6-month warranty, ensuring both performance and durability.
Accessibility is another barrier Menxtt NG tackles head-on. With free nationwide delivery and a free charging cord included with purchases, they make premium technology available across Nigeria.
Their presence in Ola Ayeni Street, Computer Village, Ikeja, combined with easy contact via 08115919964, 08140902614, 0802 061 1299, 0802 893 1940, +234 916 642 2759, as well as online support at www.menxtt.com.ng and [email protected], ensures convenience for every customer.
Anthony Nwosu, CEO of Menxtt NG, highlights the company’s mission: to deliver top-quality, secure, and durable devices while providing accessible repair and support services.
This comprehensive approach addresses all the pain points consumers face—device quality, security, warranty, and after-sales care—making Menxtt NG more than just a retailer; it’s a reliable IT partner.
In a market flooded with subpar devices and unreliable service, Menxtt NG proves that choosing a reputable IT plug is crucial. With EU-spec devices, nationwide delivery, genuine warranties, and expert repair services, Menxtt NG doesn’t just sell technology—they empower customers to enjoy, protect, and maximize the life of their devices.
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