Huawei has overtaken Apple again to remain the world's second largest smartphone vendor for two consecutive quarters, according to the leading analyst firms - IDC, IHS Markit and Counterpoint.

IDC says smartphone vendors shipped 355.2 million units in the third-quarter, down by 6.0 percent year over year, leading to a fourth quarter loss. This casts doubt on the smartphone market.

China represents roughly one-third of the smartphone share. It has experienced a decline since the second quarter of 2017, and the third quarter of 2018 is the sixth quarter where the market sees contraction. However, Huawei is gaining momentum.

The company secured the No 2 spot for another quarter. While its market share was down slightly from last quarter's 15.9 percent, Huawei still shipped 52 million handsets and grabbed 14.6 percent of the global market share.

From a product perspective, its P-series and Mate-series are keeping it competitive, and Honor, which focuses on young consumers through online channels, has continued to sell well in many markets.

Huawei's success can be attributed to its persistent efforts in research and development as well as customer experience.

In 2017, Huawei invested 89.7 billion yuan ($1.3 billion) into research and development, accounting for 15 percent of its total revenue. It's ranked sixth in terms of global R&D investment.

A few months ago, the European Commission released the "2017 Global Enterprise R&D Investment Rankings", covering 2,500 global enterprises including 481 Chinese companies. Among the top 10 Chinese firms, Huawei ranked first with an annual R&D investment of 10.4 billion euros ($ 11 billion).

The company has set up 14 R&D centers worldwide and 36 joint innovation centers.

Huawei has been leading the industry on technology innovation, chipset R&D and AI intelligence, thanks to its premium products.

Richard Yu, the CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, said the global shipment of Huawei smartphones had exceeded 100 million by July 18. "That means Huawei is well positioned to hit the 200 million annual target," he said.