For many years now (since 2011 to be precise), Samsung has always been the top smartphone vendor in the world however, according to the latest report from Gartner, it looks like Apple has taken over.
Gartner has just released a report for the global phone market for the fourth quarter of 2014. The report sees an increase of 29.9% in the worldwide sales of smartphones to end users compared to the same period last year. With smartphones getting more and more common, that is not a surprise. The surprise is how Samsung’s market share continues to fall, allowing Apple to take over.
The report shows that Apple is the top smartphone manufacturer in 4Q2014, rising from 17.8% in 4Q2013, to 20.4%. As for Samsung, they took a pretty big fall from 29.5% last year to only 19.9% market share in the fourth quarter of 2014. That is followed by Lenovo (and Motorola too) at 6.6%, Huawei at 5.7% and Xiaomi following closely behind at 5.1% market share.
As for things as a whole in 2014, Samsung is still at the top with 24.7% market share. However, that isn’t really good news at all when you compare the numbers with the whole of 2013. In 2013, Samsung’s market share was 30.9%, so that’s a fall of 6.2%, while Apple has maintained its market share despite of the pressure caused by Chinese smartphone vendors.
Of course, the report is for last year where the Samsung Galaxy S5 didn’t seem to be getting the usual fanfare of flagship Samsung devices. The year 2014 also saw many Chinese smartphone manufacturers on the rise, and the launch of the very successful Apple iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus definitely weighed down a lot on the Korean company.
With the announcement of the brand new Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge, the prettiest Samsung smartphone we’ve ever seen, will the company be able to turn things around for 2015?
(Source: Gartner via: The Verge)
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