Apple may be smartphone king in the US, but Samsung is absolutely undisputed worldwide. In Q1 2014, the South Korean company shipped more smartphones than the next four vendors combined: Apple, Huawei, Lenovo, and LG.
Smartphone vendors shipped a total of 281.5 million smartphones worldwide last quarter, up 28.6 percent from the 218.8 million units in Q1 2013, but down 2.8 percent from the 289.6 million units shipped in Q4 2013. Smartphones accounted for 62.7 percent of all mobile phone shipments in Q1 2014, up from the 50.7 percent of all mobile phone shipments in Q1 2013.
The latest quarterly figures come from IDC, which summarized its findings in the following chart:
As you can see above, Samsung decreased its market share by 1.7 percentage points (from 31.9 percent to 30.2 percent). Apple also fell: losing 1.6 points (from 17.1 percent to 15.5 percent).
Last quarter, Samsung unveiled and launched its flagship Galaxy S5 in select markets, which certainly helped grow shipments but wasn’t enough to offset market share losses. Apple meanwhile reached a new first quarter record, breaching the 40 million unit mark.
Huawei and Lenovo both managed to gain share, up 0.6 points to 4.9 percent and up 1.0 points to 4.6 percent, respectively. LG slipped 0.3 points to 4.4 percent, falling into fifth place.
Huawei and Lenovo shipments were less than a million units apart, as were Lenovo and LG shipments. The battle for third place is definitely far from over. Lenovo has the biggest edge though: it posted the largest year-over-year increase among the leading vendors, and once the acquisition of Motorola is completed, its numbers will get a big boost.
IDC says it expects total smartphone shipment volumes to reach 1.2 billion units in 2014, up 19.3 percent year-over-year from the 1.0 billion units shipped in 2013. While this is a slowdown from the 39.2 percent growth seen last year, the market share pie is still expanding and this war has just begun.
Top Image Credit: Odd Andersen/Getty Images
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