Global smartphone shipments grew 12 percent annually from 1.28 billion in full-year 2014 to a record 1.44 billion in 2015, according to Strategy Analytics Wireless Smartphone Strategies (WSS) services. For the full year, however, Apple boosted its shipments by 20.2 percent to 231.5 million units.
This is the strongest year-on-year growth of any vendor, IDC said, crediting it to the firm's affordable handsets aimed at emerging markets and "increasingly competitive" high-end line-up.
He pointed out that Huawei, which Strategy Analytics ranked as the world's third-largest smartphone supplier past year behind Samsung and Apple, was facing a strong challenge on the mainland and in the worldwide markets by the iPhone maker and Xiaomi. It can also claim to be one of the few brands in China that have not been affected by the so-called economic slowdown.
Huawei follows at number 3 with 32.4 million units shipped and tallies 8.1 percent of the whole smartphone shipments.
For the fourth quarter of 2015, a total of 399.5 million smartphones have been shipped, which seems better when compared to the same quarter of 2014.
"Huawei is poised to be in a good position to hold onto a strong No. 3 over the next year", Chau said. And as the WSJ reported, the company also said it hired an R&D executive to focus specifically on mobile software - previously the company had an R&D executive focusing on both hardware and software.
Samsung shipped 85.6 million units in Q4 2015, up 14 percent year-over-year from 75.1 million units. The comparison is largely unbalanced, however, as Samsung sells dozens of different smartphone models worldwide, while Apple now only sells the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and iPhone 5s.
IDC had similar market share numbers, but IDC Research Manager Anthony Scarsella was a little more optimistic about Apple.
Tablets and wearables, meanwhile, should make up a growing amount of the mobile unit's business, Samsung said. Another Chinese brand, OPPO, pushed into the top-five China rankings for the first time ever, with 10.8 million smartphones shipped and 9 percent marketshare in Q4 2015. Last year's fourth quarter shipments grew just six percent from the same period in 2014, marking the sector's slowest growth rate of all time.
"As for the outlook for 2016, Samsung expects single-digit percentage growth in both the smartphone and tablet categories amid softening demand and intensifying competition", Samsung said in a statement.
Even Though, Xiaomi has increased sales in India and have launched the product in Brazil, it still is leaning heavily on the Chinese market for growth.
Source: Chinese smartphone makers gain on giants Samsung and Apple
No comments:
Post a Comment