Huawei is the world's second best-selling smartphone brand, overtaking Apple for the first time ever. Samsung still holds the top place, despite reporting slow sales in its quarterly report released yesterday.

According to research firms IDC, Canalys and IHS Markit, Huawei's sales were up 40 percent from last year. Last quarter, the brand sold around 54 million phones — overtaking Apple and slowly encroaching on Samsung's sales which totaled just over 70 million.

As reported by CNN, Huawei's growth is even more surprising as the Chinese brand is all but locked out of America. Huawei has struggled to secure a partnership with a US wireless carrier, due to official concerns that its phones could be used by the Chinese government to gather intelligence. Huawei posted strong sales in the Asia Pacific region, and also experienced growth in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

"Despite its failure to strike a US carrier partnership ... the company has turned around quickly, moving away from its drive for profitability and focusing instead on finding volume growth at the low end," Mo Jia, an analyst with Canalys, said in a statement.

In other news, dual SIM cards might be coming to the new iPhone.