Apple surpassed its arch rival as world’s largest smartphone maker in the fourth quarter of 2015, reports Gartner. According to Gartner, the fourth quarter of 2014 has shown a worldwide smartphone sales record with an increase of 29.9 percent over the fourth quarter of 2013 with a total 367.5 million units.
Samsung has been in the top spot of global smartphone market share since 2011, but lost the crown to Apple in the fourth quarter of 2014 (see Table 1). During the year 2014, a total of 1.2 billion smartphone units were sold to end users, an increase of about 28.4% over the previous year. These global smartphone numbers represents two-thirds of the global mobile phone sales.
Table 1
Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor in 4Q14 (Thousands of Units)
|
Company |
4Q14 Units |
4Q14 Market Share (%) |
4Q13 Units |
4Q13 Market Share (%) |
| Apple |
74,832 |
20.4 |
50,224 |
17.8 |
| Samsung |
73,032 |
19.9 |
83,317 |
29.5 |
| Lenovo* |
24,300 |
6.6 |
16,465 |
5.8 |
| Huawei |
21,038 |
5.7 |
16,057 |
5.7 |
| Xiaomi |
18,582 |
5.1 |
5,598 |
2.0 |
| Others |
155,701.6 |
42.4 |
111,204.3 |
39.3 |
| Total |
367,484.5 |
100.0 |
282,866.2 |
100.0 |
Source: Gartner (March 2015)
Samsung further lost its market share in the fourth quarter of 2014, when nearly 10 percent points were dropped in its smartphone market share, says a principal research analyst at Gartner. Samsung market share was at its highest back in third quarter of 2013, but since then the company has been struggling to control the drop in its market share.
Samsung’s performance in the smartphone market deteriorated further in the fourth quarter of 2014, when it lost nearly 10 percentage points in market share. Samsung continues to struggle to control its falling smartphone share, which was at its highest in the third quarter of 2013. This downward trend shows that Samsung’s share of profitable premium smartphone users has come under significant pressure.
Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner, says that with Apple dominating the premium smartphone market and the Chinese brands flooding market with quality hardware, Samsung can secure more loyalty and longer-term differentiation by offering a solid ecosystem of apps, content and unique services exclusive to Samsung devices.
[Gartner]