New Delhi, Nov 23 (IANS): The smartphone unit sales declined 5.7 per cent globally to 366 million units in Q3 from the same period last year, a new Gartner report said on Monday.

Samsung led the global market with selling 80.8 million units and grabbing a 22 per cent market share.

Huawei was second with selling 51.8 million units and registering 14.1 per cent share while Xiaomi came third with selling 44.4 million units, gaining top growth of 39 per cent to log 12.1 market share.

"For the first time this year, smartphone sales to end users in three of the top five markets i.e., India, Indonesia and Brazil increased, growing 9.3 per cent, 8.5 per cent and 3.3 per cent, respectively," said Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner.

According to a report in TechCrunch, Xiaomi's numbers were strong enough to see it overtake Apple for the quarter to become the number 3 player globally.

Apple sold 40.5 million units in the third quarter of 2020, a decline of 0.6 per cent as compared to 2019, garnering 11.1 per cent global market share.

According to Annette Zimmermann, research vice president at Gartner, the slight decrease was mainly due to Apple's delayed shipment start of its new 2020 iPhone generation.

OPPO was fifth with 8.2 per cent market share.