HUAWEI has sold 9 million HUAWEI P9 smartphones

Huawei has sold 9 million units of its flagship handset, the HUAWEI P9, the Chinese manufacturer announced at a press event yesterday .

The P9 went on sale in April of this year and sold well in HUAWEI’s home country and Europe thanks to a significant marketing push (including TV spots featuring A-list celebrities).

HUAWEI announced in September that it had achieved 6 million P9 sales, shifting an additional 3 million units – or another 50 percent of what it had old up to that point – in the last two months alone.

At IFA 2016 in September, HUAWEI announced the P9 in two new colors, metallic red and metallic blue, which may have made a significant contribution those additional three million sales.

More recently, HUAWEI unveiled the Mate 9, the latest in its flagship phablet series, which could see unprecedented sales now that it’s Samsung-branded competitor, the Galaxy Note 7, has been cancelled.

HUAWEI is currently the third largest smartphone manufacturer in the world behind Apple and front-runner Samsung. HUAWEI’s CEO, Richard Yu, says the company will overtake Apple in the next two years.