Gartner today published its third quarter numbers, showing overall growth in the smartphone market and a strong quarter for Apple. Mobile devices overall saw as many as 456 million sold with smartphones taking a 301 million slice of that pie, which comes out to a solid 66% (up 20% from last year). This shift in the market seems to be hurting Samsung and Nokia the most, because while the Korean giant is still leading the pack, this year smaller companies with slimmer margins seem to be taking some of its foothold.
While the number of devices that ship with Android continues to surpass iOS by leaps and bounds, the report for this quarter shows a strong increase in iPhone sales for Apple thanks to the launch of the iPhone 6. Sales were up 26% quarter over quarter, but market share didn’t see the same growth (up .6% vs. Q3 2013). Gartner expects that during this fourth quarter Apple will see its largest quarter ever, citing the fact that both the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have seen demand exceed supply to some degree.
While still the market leader, Samsung saw a decline in market share year-over-year, selling 73 million smartphones and landing a 24.4% market share this quarter (an 8 point drop vs. Q3 2013). But the biggest problem for the Korean giant isn’t Apple as much as it seems to be the ever-encroaching Xiaomi, which saw massive growth, especially in emerging markets. While the company only sold 16 million smartphones in Q3 2014 (accounting for just 5.2% market share), this number is almost 4% more than 2013, when it sold only 3.6 million units.
As noted by Gartner:
From a regional perspective, emerging markets exhibited some of the highest growths ever recorded with Eastern Europe and the Middle East and Africa achieving the highest increase in the third quarter of 2014, with sales of smartphones growing almost 50 percent year-over-year. Among the mature markets, the U.S. achieved the highest growth, with an 18.9 percent increase in the third quarter of 2014, fostered by the launch of the iPhones 6 and 6 Plus. Western Europe saw a decline of 5.2 percent, the third consecutive decline this year.
Xiaomi saw a $56 million profit in 2013 as was reported this morning, and for the first time landed a spot in the top 5 smartphone manufacturers in today’s analysis from Gartner. Now, the company is market leader in China, where Samsung is clearly feeling the weight of that where it saw what was its steepest decline of 28.6 percent.
As for the mobile operating system numbers, Android saw an increase of 1.1% over the same quarter in 2013 (holding its spot at more than 80% market share), while iOS saw a little bit more than half of 1% increase. The other three operating systems in the top five—Windows, Blackberry, and others—saw declines across the board from their already straggling numbers.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Good news. iPhone 6 and 6 Plus deserve all the accolades they’ve been getting. No wonder why so many people want them.
One of the big reasons for Apple’s growth isn’t the iPhone 6. It is due to the tragic failings of Samsung, who released a tragedy of a smartphone. People are running from Samsung for good reason – quality, feature set, and reliability. And so naturally Apple will pick up customers as the public realizes that Damsung’s 15 minutes of success are long over.
It happened to Blackerry. And Nokia. Now it is just Samsung.
While your theory is commendable, it’s not accurate I’m afraid – the details are in the actual text. It’s true that Samsung did lose 8% of the market share, but those people who abandoned them didn’t come running to Apple, they went running to other Android phone manufacturers. Apple’s growth appears to be based upon new users of smartphones as opposed to folk swapping from Samsung to Apple.
There is not enough information in the article to say where those customers came/went. It speculates that Xiaomi is taking the lions share of Samsung’s lost customers, but it doesn’t back up the claim. What I would think is that its unlikely that a person who bought Samsung’s flagship phone just one year ago could be expected to purchase their new phone this year. Apple, on the other hand, very well could have people dropping their phone from a year ago because of the larger screen size. So now we can speculate that Apple may have found a way to get people to upgrade in less than a two year cycle in addition to convincing Samsung customers who secretly wanted an iPhone but not as much as the larger screen. But if you really want to speculate about people abandoning a platform, let’s go back two years ago to see what phone the people with expiring contracts choose for their next contract.
The bottom line is that the market for smart phones is bigger, and Apple has found a way to grab an even larger share of it whether that be through Android customers switching over, people who have never had a smart phone, or iPhone users who didn’t want to wait until their iPhone 5 contracts ran out in order to get the larger screens.
drhalftone – your right of course but we can only base assumptions on what is presented here. It’s pointless debunking a speculated comment with a speculation of your own.
According to the report, Samsung’s market share was down 8%. Huawai was up 0.6% and Xiaomi was up 3.7% %. Apple was up 0.6%. From the details presented, it appears that the company who benefited most from folk abandoning Samsung is Xiaomi.
it’s not about how much market share apple took.. if just 10 to 15% of Q3 customers came from Samsung, that’s 3.8 to 5.7 million of Samsung’s most profitable customers..
To be precise, I think it should read “4 percentage points” instead of “4%”:
“While the company only sold 16 million smartphones in Q3 2014 (accounting for just 5.2% market share), this number is almost 4% more than 2013, when it sold only 3.6 million units.”
And yet, Apple stock is DOWN almost 100 points (pre-split) in under TWO WEEKS ! WHY?? Does anyone care anymore??