See, this is what happens when you’re late. Xiaomi has turfed Apple out of the top three smartphone sellers on the planet, relegating the American brand to a lowly fourth place for the third quarter of 2020. All because they delayed the iPhone 12 for 2020 — a September launch might have seen Apple hang in there.

But it doesn’t hurt that the Chinese brand shipped the number of phones it did in the third quarter of 2020. That smartphone sales slump that hit the planet when everyone was locked down in their homes seems to be recovering, and Xiaomi appears to have taken advantage of it. Market research firm Gartner has all of the stats.

Xiaomi the money

The Chinese company sold more than 44 million smartphones in the third quarter of 2020, up some twelve million over the same period last year. That puts it in third place behind Samsung (80 million smartphones) and Huawei (just under 52 million handsets), with Apple coming in fourth place with 40 million phones or so. Apple’s performance is actually rather impressive, its year-on-year performance only declining very slightly.

Perhaps the largest worry in the current lot of sales figures is Huawei’s performance. The company dropped from almost 66 million handsets to just below 52 million — a fall driven by you-know-who. It’s possible that Huawei will see an uptick again, but its previously-dominating market position looking in jeopardy.

But don’t go thinking that Xiaomi’s climb in the pecking order is anything but temporary. Apple’s iPhone 12 may have turned up late (not that we’ve been put out of our misery yet) but it’ll send the brand’s devices rocketing back up to the top of the logs in short order. Q4 numbers should look substantially different to this lot — but Xiaomi has had its sights set on a better position in the pack for some time now.