Global smartphone sales increase 13.5 per cent in Q2

Gartner said smartphone sales in China fell for the first time year-over-year, recording a 4 percent decline. The largest market for smartphones, China is reportedly in the last lap of its first-time buyers segment, and replacements being the current trend.

Apple Inc.'s smartphone market share stood at 14.6% in the reporting quarter, with iPhones witnessing a 36% increase in sales, which resulted in the firm gaining a 2.4% market share. Huawei, on the other hand, saw the highest sales growth (46.3 percent) on the back of robust overseas sales and 4G smartphone sales in China.

The increasing number of Chinese Smartphone players in the Indian market has even led to price war. Although Apple has exposure in the region, we would remind subscribers that CEO Tim Cook struck a confident tone when discussing the region on the company's recent conference call, stating that he believes China will be Apple's strongest market at some point in the foreseeable future. The sales of Samsung Electronics plummeted 5.3%, to 72 million.

Gartner Inc (NYSE:IT) published a report today, which shows the slowest pace of yearly growth since 2013, in worldwide markets, experienced in the second quarter of 2015.

Samsung lost ground to Apple in the worldwide smartphone market for the second quarter of 2015, as the overall growth rate for sales of the devices slowed.

Gupta said China has reached saturation point.

Xiaomi took fifth place thanks to its eastern success with 4.9%, so the usual players are still dominating the market. An interesting note is that Android and iOS combined made up 96.8 percent of the entire smartphone market with Windows following far behind at only 2.5 percent of the market and BlackBerry OS at 0.3 percent. This marks the first ever sales decline in China (which still bought about a third of the total smartphone sold during the quarter), a worrisome milestone for device manufacturers.

The Korean mobile phone maker saw its cut of the smartphone market dip to 21.9 percent in the second quarter ended June 30 from 26.2 percent for the same quarter past year, Gartner said on Thursday.

North American consumers bought 10 percent more smartphones in the second quarter than they did in the year-ago quarter, and they're increasingly buying more expensive models, market research company Gfk found.

Source: Global smartphone sales increase 13.5 per cent in Q2