Huawei, China’s largest handset maker, topped the list with 19.1 million unit sales or 17.5 percent market share, followed by budget phone maker Oppo whose phone sales almost doubled to 15.2 million units during the same period.

Oppo’s market share stood at 13.9 percent. In June alone, the company topped the Chinese smartphone market with 22.9 percent market share, according to a separate report by CounterPoint.

Vivo, another Chinese budget phone maker, outpaced Xiaomi for the first time in terms of sales, selling 113 million phones with 11.9 percent market share. Xiaomi, affectionately called “China’s Apple,” suffered a 34 percent decline in sales with 11.7 percent market share.

Apple was ranked fifth, with its market share falling from 9.2 percent to 6.7 percent over the past one year.

The research firm didn’t reveal the names falling out of the top five handset makers. Samsung whose ranking fell to the sixth last year is believed to have retained its position during the cited period.

Despite the upbeat sales of its flagship Galaxy S7 and its Edge variant globally, Samsung has yet to find a breakthrough in the all-important Chinese market. Its market share last year was 7.7 percent there.

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)