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May 01, 2014

Samsung Takes the World of Smartphones by Storm

A new report from IDC gives us a look into the world of smartphone shipments, a world where Apple may have the United States market largely under its control, but when it comes to the global market, Samsung is the undisputed king in terms of shipments. Just for the first quarter of 2014, Samsung managed to not only outship Apple, but also managed to outship the rest of the top five vendors combined.

As a whole, the reports note, smartphone shipments are up, reaching 281.5 million smartphones worldwide compared to 218.8 million in the first quarter of 2013. That's an increase of 28.6 percent over the previous year. However, there's also a bit of softness in the market in year-to-year comparison, in which smartphone shipments dropped 2.8 percent, likely owing to the differences in the Christmas shopping season and the comparatively soft sales period of the post-holiday rush first quarter.

The market is also clearly swinging toward smartphones, as smartphones now accounted for 62.7 percent of all mobile phones shipped in the first quarter of 2014. That in turn is up from 50.7 percent of phone shipments for the first quarter of 2013, proving that the market is growing less interested in feature phones and more interested in the more advanced breed of phone. This is a fact likely not lost on Nokia, who recently brought in a new CEO following the sale of its handset business to Microsoft.


Image via Ecns.cn

But the recent data also revealed some additional interesting facts about the overall state of the mobile device market. While Samsung is still well ahead of its competitors by a wide margin, its share of the total market has actually declined somewhat between the first quarter of 2013 and the first quarter of 2014, going from 31.9 percent to 30.2 percent. Apple, the second-largest shipper, found a likewise drop in market share, going from 17.1 percent to 15.5 percent. LG saw a slight decline as well, going from 4.7 percent to 4.4 percent.

The inevitable question here, of course, is one of just where those gains went. Huawei actually took a chunk of that gain, going from 4.3 percent of the market to 4.9 percent, and Lenovo saw some gains as well, going from 3.6 percent to 4.6 percent. The massive chunk of market for “other makers” also saw gains from 38.5 percent to 40.5 percent of the market. Lenovo is also expected to get something of a second wind in the market stakes as it draws a share in from its acquisition of Motorola.

However, the IDC report has one extra key factor involved: the total volume of smartphones shipped is beginning to slow up a bit. IDC expects a total of 1.2 billion units to be shipped in 2014, which is up 19.3 percent against the 2013 numbers of about one billion even. Compared to the growth seen from 2012 to 2014, though, the numbers are showing a bit of a slowdown: that period saw a 39.2 percent growth in year-over-year comparisons.

The market may be becoming saturated, and with overall weakness still seen in a lot of markets, it may be that users will start making old phones last just a little longer than in previous years. Sales volumes may slow down, particularly on higher-end models. The market may be reaching its breaking point, and as new form factors like wearable tech make a play for users' wallets, the end result here may be a difficult one for phone makers.




Edited by Alisen Downey


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