Samsung loses Top Slot To Apple, Record 1.25 Bln Smartphones Sold In 2014: Gartner

For the first time ever the world has seen over a Billion smartphones sold in a calendar year. According to latest Gartner report, close to 1.25 billion smartphones went off the shelves in 2014 on back of record fourth quarter.

Smartphone sales witnessed 29.9 percent increase in 4Q2014 compared to 4Q2013. Over 367.5 million units were sold in fourth quarter globaly. In the calendar year 2014, sales of smartphones to end users totaled 1.244 billion units, up 28.4 percent from 2013 and represented two-thirds of global mobile phone sales.

This is one of the worst quarters for Samsung as their market share eroded by whopping 10 percent in 4Q2014 alone. Samsung had held on to top spot for past 4 years!

Lenovo (which acquired Motorola last year) was placed behind Apple and Samsung having 6.6 percent market share globaly. Huawei (5.7%) and Xiaomi (5.1%) were respectively ranked fourth and fifth smartphone vendors in the world.

Samsung has been steadily losing market share over last year, but in fourth quarter the slide has been very significant. Samsung’s loss has been due to many factors that include rise of value for money smartphone offerings from Chinese vendors, launch of iPhone 6 and 6 plus from Apple and lack of demand for premium high-priced smartphones.

Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner, said, “With Apple dominating the premium phone market and the Chinese vendors increasingly offering quality hardware at lower prices, it is through a solid ecosystem of apps, content and services unique to Samsung devices that Samsung can secure more loyalty and longer-term differentiation at the high end of the market,”

As far as the market share goes, Xiaomi registered significant growth – their market share increased from 2 percent in 4Q2013 to 5.1 percent in 4Q2014, a rise of over 250%. On the other hand Samsung lost over 33% of the market share in single quarter – From 29.9% in 4Q2013 to 19.9% in 4Q2014.

Apple reported its best quarter ever in the fourth quarter of 2014, which saw it sell 74.8 million units and move to the No. 1 position in the global smartphone market. Apple’s first ever large-screen phones continued to see huge demand with sales in China and U.S., growing at 56 percent and 88 percent, respectively.

Smartphone OS Market Share

Android further increased it market share and now commands over 80.7 of global smartphone market. Over 1 Billion Android based Smartphones were sold in 2014. This also means that for every 1 iOS phone, 5 Android phones are sold.

Although, iOS saw rise in the unit sales compared to 2013, their market share fell marginally from 15.5% to 15.4%.

Windows, Blackberry and others, all saw fall in their market share compared to previous years!

Here is the worldwide mobile phone sales (feature+smart phones) to end users by vendor in 2014 (Thousands of Units)

Company	2014 Units	2014 Market Share (%)	2013 Units	2013 Market Share (%)
Samsung	392,546	20.9	444,472	24.6
Apple	191,426	10.2	150,786	8.3
Microsoft	185,660	9.9	250,835	13.9
Lenovo*	84,029	4.5	66,463	3.7
LG Electronics	76,096	4.0	69,094	3.8
Huawei	70,499	3.8	53,296	2.9
TCL Communication	64,026	3.4	49,538	2.7
Xiaomi	56,529	3.0	13,423	0.7
ZTE	53,910	2.9	59,903	3.3
Sony	37,791	2.0	37,596	2.1
Micromax	37,094	2.0	25,431	1.4
Others	629,360	33.5	587,764	32.5
Total	1,878,968	100.0	1,808,600	100.0

Micromax is now the 10^th largest mobile phone vendor in the world according to Gartner!