Does it also seem to you that time is running even faster than usual during the pandemic? One minute it was the beginning of the year and now suddenly the first third of May is already over. Of course, this will not prevent us from choosing the winners and losers of the week, but I feel that the chosen ones have already occupied those same positions.

This means that Xiaomi can once again rejoice in its place in the sun while its rival Huawei is once again – unfortunately – with the title of loser. But before we talk about the Chinese giants, let’s take a look back at the last few days.

Oppo’s new mid-rangers

The week got off to a particularly stressful start for esteemed colleague Benjamin Lucks, as he got to get to grips with Oppo’s new smartphones straight into Monday morning. After we have already been given plenty of gifts with the devices of the Find-X3 series this year, Oppo now followed up with its new mid-range phone, which includes the models A54 5G, A74, A75 5G and A94 5G.

After the Oppo A72 was a huge sales success for the company, we were naturally eager to see the new handsets. Sadly though, there was a little spectacular this time around and we can’t help but wonder what kind of strategy Oppo was thinking about. Read the post linked above and I’m sure you’ll share our opinion – and confusion. We’ve already had a look at the A74, by the way.

Our editor Antoine Engels also questioned the extent to which Oppo and OnePlus – both under the BBK umbrella – could become big players in Europe alongside each other. He even spoke of a sibling battle in his text, which is worth reading, and indeed it will be exciting to see how things play out for these two in Europe.

Whats up, WhatsApp?

Next week is an interesting deadline for all messenger users (well, sort of for almost all of us, right?), as the changes to WhatsApp rules take effect on May 15th. For this reason, we are also dealing with the popular messenger these days and have already brought our overview of the best WhatsApp alternatives up to speed.

There you will not only learn which alternatives would make sense for what reason, but also get a summary of what exactly it will be about next week.

Lost and found 

Apple fans had a generous menu this week at NextPit. Our coverage of AirTag locators continued at full steam and we explained what features they lose when used with old iPhones. Are you here now and don’t know what AirTag is? No problem, check out our AirTags review and find out what these devices are capable of.

In addition, we show how the iPhone can now be unlocked using the Apple Watch, one of the new features brought with the iOS 14.5 system update.

Xiaomi shines, Huawei a little less so

With that, we’re slowly coming to the end of our review and this week’s winners and losers article. Both are related to new numbers, which in this case released by consultancy Canalys. In a nutshell, we see that Xiaomi managed to pass Apple and take second place in Europe in the 1st quarter in sales of mobile phones.

As you can see in the chart of the analysts from Canalys, Xiaomi is now even quite comfortably ahead of Apple (19%) with 23% market share in Europe and only Samsung (35%) sells more devices than Xiaomi in the old continent.

This is reason enough for us to choose Xiaomi as the winner of the week, coincidentally (or not?) when we publish the complete review of the brand’s new flagship, the Mi 11 Ultra, which you can see in the following link:

But Xiaomi was not the only one to present positive numbers in the table – basically almost all registered an increase in sales. Unfortunately, Huawei’s downturn continues, meaning that the Chinese giant have now dropped to fifth place and a market share of just 3% in Europe, after an 81% drop in sales.

The significance of this fall is even greater when remembering that in Europe Huawei has always been very strong. All over the world, they are no longer in the top 5, and it seems a matter of time before the company get out of that top 5 on the continent.

The numbers that made Huawei our loser of the week can certainly be reversed, but the fact that mobile phone buyers in Europe are turning to other brands certainly hits Huawei hard.

So, what do you say? Can you relate to our choice of winners and losers, or would you have chosen differently? Feel free to write it in the comments and also leave us your opinion on the Huawei dilemma if you like. Thank you for staying loyal to NextPit again this week – take care and have a good start into the new week!