Samsung’s domination of the smartphone market, at least in terms of volume, has just come to and end. Apple has caught up with the Korean giant as the world’s biggest smartphone vendor in the fourth quarter of 2014, thanks to booming sales of its new iPhone 6, according to market researcher Strategy Analytics.
Apple and Samsung both shipped an estimated 74.5 million devices in the last three months of 2014, making them joint first in the shipments race, with each cornering 20 percent of the smartphone market.
More interestingly, this represents a 2 percent year-over-year bump for Apple and 10 percent year-over-year decline for Samsung. The smartphone market is believed to have increased to a record 380.1 million devices in the fourth quarter of 2014, but Samsung wasn’t benefiting from it. In fact, by these numbers, the company has seen its market share slide from 30 percent at the end of 2013 to just 20 percent now. The South Korean giant said earnings from smartphones and other mobile gadgets dropped 64 percent annually in the October-December period to 1.96 trillion won ($1.80 billion), contributing to its first annual earnings fall in three years. It was the mobile division’s fifth consecutive quarter of decline, in contrast to Apple’s record-breaking 74.5 million iPhone sales in the three months to Dec 27 on the back of the success of its big-screen iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. The report talks about how Apple is eating the company’s lunch at the high-end, Huawei in the middle and Xiaomi, amongst others, at the bottom.
Sitting pretty in third place, meanwhile, is Lenovo, with its acquisition of Motorola, while Huawei sits in fourth spot thanks, in part, to its considerable efforts in China and Africa.
