It’s likely the first good news the scandal-embroiled telecoms company Huawei has had in a long time.

The Chinese phonemaker’s shipments went up 33.6% year-on-year despite a global industry slowdown of 4.1%, according to industry tracker International Data Corporation (IDC). That makes it the third largest shipper of smartphones in the world for 2018 after Samsung and Apple, according to IDC.

Fellow Chinese brand Xiaomi also posted a strong growth of 32.2%, putting it in fourth place. Following Xiaomi is the Guangdong-based Oppo, whose shipments went up 1.3% from the previous year, according to IDC.

Meanwhile, shipments of non-Chinese smartphone leaders Samsung and Apple were down 8% and 3.2% respectively, the industry tracker said.

Shipment figures are commonly used in industry reports to gauge phone markets. They refer to the number of devices manufacturers like Apple and Huawei send to carriers and retailers, and may or may not reflect the number of devices that actually reached consumers.

The market’s woes were due to “lengthening replacement cycles, increasing penetration levels in many large markets, political and economic uncertainty, and growing consumer frustration around continuously rising price points,” according to IDC – challenging conditions that the industry tracker says will continue in 2019.

Related: The iPhone’s Shrinking China Shipments