Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei's consumer business group.Huawei said the company reached the 100 million-unit shipments milestone on December 22, 2015, then on October 14, 2016 and in September last year. Yu said during the product launch for its Nova 3 in Shenzhen.

As Huawei had previously stated that it aims to overtake Apple as the number two smartphone vendor within the next few years, it is likely that the company would effectively bring that goal into a reality shortly, according to industry sources. Apple reportedly shipped over 215 million iPhone devices in 2017.

Yu revealed that Huawei's smartphone shipments have grown 51 times compared to seven years ago, and now the company holds a 30 percent share of the smartphone market in China.

Yu said this was down to  good sales of a number of the company's models and the company's strong presence in some overseas markets such as India.

Meanwhile, the Nova 3 comes with a 6.3-inch IPS (1080 by 2340 pixels) display, Hisilicon Kirin 970 CPU, 16-megapixel rear camera, and a 24-megapixel front shooter, and is packed with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of ROM.