The global smartphone market has doubled
Global smartphone shipments for the second quarter of this year increased by 47% and reached 158.3 million devices (with China’s share of 27%). Moreover, according to the analytical agency Canalys, Android has only strengthened its leadership in this market.
Almost the same data is provided by IDC in a report published at the end of July. According to their research, the smartphone market in the second quarter compared to the same period last year grew by 42% to 153.9 million devices.
Let’s go back to the Canalys report (yesterday we posted data on the tablet market), shipments of Android smartphones more than doubled in the second quarter — by 110.4% and reached the level of 107.8 million devices. This allowed Google’s operating system to gain control of 68.1% of the market. “The growth in the volume of Android smartphones is largely due to the success of Samsung, which has sold about 45 million Android smartphones,” analysts at Canalys say.
According to Canalys research, Samsung managed to maintain leadership in the global smartphone supplier market with a 31% share (according to IDC, Samsung sold 50.2 million smartphones, which is somewhat different from Canalys data). The top five also included Apple, Nokia, HTC and RIM.
Interestingly, iPhone shipments increased by 28% during the reporting period and reached the figure of 26 million devices, but at the same time the iPhone share in the overall market decreased to 16.4%, which is quite natural against the background of the overall growth of the smartphone market.
The largest increase in shipments over the specified period was shown by smartphones based on Windows Phone — this is 277.3%. But their representation in the market as a whole remained almost unchanged: growth from 1.2% to 3.2%. A total of 5.1 million Windows smartphones were sold.
The BlackBerry and Symbian platforms showed negative dynamics. Representation in the smartphone market based on these platforms decreased by 32.1% and 64.6%, respectively, market shares fell to 5.4% and 4.1%.
It should be noted that China has demonstrated phenomenal growth: the value of supplies in this region increased by 199% and amounted to 42 million units. That is, the Chinese market accounted for almost 27% of global shipments of smartphone devices, which is more than the former leader – the United States, which has only 16%. Yes, 81% of them are Android smartphones.
