Huawei is expected to lead smartphone vendors with the highest shipment growth rate in 2016 as other brands including Samsung Electronics, Apple and Xiaomi are likely to see their shipments stay flat or even decline on year, according to industry sources.

Last year was a break-through year for Huawei. It shipped more than 108 million smartphones in 2015, which represented a huge jump from the 75 million shipped during the year previous. It may not have shipped as many as Samsung or Apple, but neither of those two matched the company's impressive 44% growth.

Meanwhile, the sources are conservative about the prospects of iPhone shipments in 2016, estimating total iPhone device shipments to reach 220 million in 2016, down 5% from a year earlier.

Huawei's plans for 2016 allegedly include offering up to four variants of its next non-Nexus flagship, the Huawei P9, and Huawei Mate 9 flagship phone, Honor series phones Huawei Honor 8. With the Huawei Honor 5X having launched in the US, and with Huawei having partnered with Google on the current Nexus smartphone, the company's brand name will become far more reconizable over the coming months.  This will undoubtedly lead to more smartphone sales, as the company takes advantage of the competitive landscape.