China's Xiaomi emerged as the No. 1 player in the European smartphone market in the second quarter. Samsung Electronics came in second, registering negative growth.

Smartphone shipments to the European market increased 14 percent year-on-year to 50.1 million units in the second quarter, said market research company Strategy Analytics (SA) on Aug. 2 (local time).

Xiaomi of China came in first with 12.7 million units, accounting for 25.3 percent of the total. Its sales soared 67.1 percent from a year ago. This was the first time Xiaomi has topped the list in Europe.

The highlight of this quarter is that Xiaomi emerged as the No. 1 smartphone maker in terms of shipments, SA said. Xiaomi enjoyed a huge success in Russia and Ukraine and overtook Samsung Electronics, which ranked first for a long time.

Samsung shipped 12 million units during the same period, with its market share falling 7 percentage points to 24.0 percent. Samsung released the Galaxy A series but could not to take advantage of Huawei’s fall in Europe as it had to compete fiercely with Apple in the luxury smartphone market and Chinese smartphone makers in the budget smartphone market, SA said.

Apple, the third ranker, chalked up a 19.2 percent market share by shipping 9.6 million units. Apple's first 5G smartphone iPhone 12, released in the second half of last year, is steadily gaining popularity from loyal Apple customers.

China's Oppo and Realme ranked fourth and fifth with markets shares of 5.6 percent and 3.8 percent, respectively. The two companies logged sharp growth rates of 180 percent and 1,800 percent, respectively, compared to a year before. After Huawei was virtually kicked out of the United States and Europe, Chinese companies are quickly filling the vacuum.