14 DAY TRIAL // Reports about smartphone sales skyrocketing have begun to sound like a devoted mantra and every each month one or another pops up to emphasize customers are still obsessively drawn to handsets.
The most recent report from Gartner covering the Q3 2014 period reveals that smartphone sales grew by 20% to 301 million, with most growth being driven by low-cost Android handsets coming out of good old China.
Yes, the jump was made at the expense of feature phone, whose sales fell by 25%, but that’s not really a big surprise is it?
Xiaomi makes it to the top 5
Anyway, the Q3 growth attracted an interesting rearrangement among the top five smartphone vendors of the world. For starters, Xiaomi seems to be the big winner. China’s Apple managed to climb up to be part of the prestigious group, while kicking out LG in the processor. Sorry LG!
Xiaomi snatched 5.2% of the smartphone market in Q3 2014, which constitutes a pretty impressive rise compared to the same time last year when the company only had 1.5%.
You probably already know who’s top dog. Samsung continues to hold on to the king position, but compared to the same period last year, overall smartphone shipments saw a decrease, leaving the Korean tech giant to hold dominion only over 24.4% of the total market (translates into 73 million units sold), compared to 32.1%.
Quite expectantly, coming in at number two we find Apple holding control of 12.7%. The Cupertino tech giant experienced an increase (albeit a small one) compared to the same time last year, when it only had 12.1%.
The other two players making it into the top 5 are Huawei (number 3) with 5.3% and Lenovo with 5%.
Notice the small difference between Huawei and Xiaomi, so soon enough China’s Apple will probably jump to the third position, sending Huawei down a step.
Even if Lenovo is a newcomer to the world of smartphones, the company already managed to sell enough handsets to make it into the party with the big boys.
Android still rules supreme
Gartner also shared numbers related to mobile platform usage. Again, Android dominates the smartphone market in Q3, showing an increase from last year’s 82% to 2014’s 83.1%.
iOS’s dominion saw a modest rise in percentage, going up from 12.1% to 12.7%. Interestingly enough, Windows seems to have experienced a decrease from the 3.6% in 2013 to 3.0% in 2014.
Completing the top 4 is BlackBerry, which saw its marketshare falter by 1% compared to the same time last year.
So here you have it, folks, smartphone sales continue to boom and Xiaomi seems to be benefiting the most out from this situation.
