Smartphone Sales: Samsung Maintains Top Spot, but Chinese Vendors Are Closing In
Apple (AAPL) chipped away at Samsung Electronics' (005930.Korea) lead in smartphone sales worldwide, but Chinese phone makers continue to gain on both.
The latest figures, from the first three months of 2018, offer a vivid illustration of a stalled market in which demand for "premium and high-end smartphones continued to suffer due to marginal incremental benefits during upgrade," says Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner, which conducted the study.
"Demand for entry-level smartphones (sub-$100) and low mid-tier smartphones (sub-$150) improved due to better-quality models," writes Gupta, explaining market-share gains by makers of inexpensive smartphones, such as Chinese vendors Huawei (002502.China) and Xiaomi.
Huawei climbed to 10.5% in the quarter (40.4 million units sold) from 9% a year ago to strengthen its No. 3 spot, and Xiaomi soared to 7.4% (28.5 million) from 3.4% last year to climb to the fourth spot. Both companies, and Oppo at 7.3% (28.2 million), would have fared even better if not for softness in the China smartphone market, where they glean more than 70% of their sales.
Apple closed in on Samsung for the top spot. Its share improved to 14.1% (54.1 million units sold) from 13.7% a year ago. Samsung dropped to 20.5% (78.6 million) from 20.8% last year. Apple's iPhone X, iPhone 8, and iPhone 8 Plus contributed to a slight rebound in iPhone sales, Gupta said, while Samsung didn't receive the bump it expected from an earlier release of its flagship Galaxy S9 and S9+ models.
In all, smartphone sales were relatively flat for the quarter, at 383.5 billion units sold.
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