Samsung back on top of smartmobe market

Squashes Apple with success in key mid-market nations where price matters

Samsung's sales may be sliding nastily, but box-counter IDC says the company is back on top of the world when it comes to smartphone shipments.

The firm's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker for 2015's first quarter found 336.5 million smartphones shipped, worldwide. That's “ up 16.7% from the 288.5 million units in 1Q14 but down by -10.9% from the 377.5 million units shipped in 4Q14.”

Samsung shovelled out 82.4m phones in Q1, the analyst firm says, to win 24.5 per cent of the world's market. Which may sound impressive, save for the fact that the company's numbers for Q1 2014 were 88.5m and 30.7 per cent.

Here's how the analyst firm saw things for Q1.

Top Five Smartphone Vendors, Shipments, Market Share and Year-Over-Year Growth, Q1 2015 Preliminary Data (Units in Millions)

Vendor	1Q15 Shipment Volumes	1Q15 Market Share	1Q14 Shipment Volumes	1Q14 Market Share	Year-Over-Year Change
Samsung	82.4	24.5%	88.5	30.7%	-7.0%
Apple	61.2	18.2%	43.7	15.2%	40.0%
Lenovo*	18.8	5.6%	12.6	4.4%	49.2%
Huawei	17.0	5.0%	13.5	4.7%	25.9%
LG Electronics	15.4	4.6%	12.3	4.3%	25.3%
Others	141.7	42.1%	117.8	40.8%	20.3%
Total	336.5	100.0%	288.5	100.0%	16.7%

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, April 29, 2015

Annual assessments of mobile phone vendors' fortunes are more accurate, because seasonal release cycles create different demand patterns. Samsung will likeley surge in Q2 on the back of Galaxy S6 sales, while Apple will settle as punters await the heir to the iPhone 6.

But Samsung has a chance of smoothing out those peaks and troughs because, IDG says, it “... increased shipments of lower-end models, particularly to regions like Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Samsung's improved streamlined portfolio of devices, including the new premium inspired A-series, proved successful in many mid-tier markets that were typically dominated by local brands.”

Those local brands are probably counted among the “others” in the chart above. And so, we presume is Microsoft which cannot currently crack the top five. Nor could Xiaomi, this quarter, as LG's entry-level 4G handsets found favour “in both emerging and developed markets.”

Such nations were also important to fourth-placed Huawei, which now counts a third of its sales in value segments, up from five per cent a year ago. ®