The third quarter of 2015 was very good for smartphone market because of the high demand for low-cost phones in emerging market. It also broke expectation records and reveals interesting facts. Samsung is still ruling in vendors and Android is the most desired mobile operating system. Emerging markets are buying more and Windows phone is struggling. These facts were confirmed by Nov. 18 report from Gartner.
According to the report published by Gartner, Global sales of smartphones was 353 million units in Q3 2015. If we compare it to the same quarter of previous year, it is 15.5% up. In this time period, mature markets saw an increase of just 8.2% in smartphone sales but emerging markets surprised us with an increase of 18.4% in smartphone sales (rose to 259.7 million shipments).
India is fastest growing market in both Internet and smartphone market. If I just talk about smartphones, you can see how Chinese brands are entering in Indian market to get its market share as soon as possible. Garner’s report can also be seen as a report card of those companies.
In the previous quarter, Samsung launched few mid-range phones and burnt enough cash and promotion of phones. It helped the company to retain its top spot with 23.7% market. Apple is at the second spot with the market share of just 13.1%. With 7.7% market share Huawei is at the third place in terms of smartphone shipment. The report counted Lenovo and Motorola in combined and put Lenovo in 4th spot with 4.9% market share. This hurt Xiaomi and pushed it to the 5th place with almost same 4.9% market share.
Android and iOS both saw the increase in sales while Windows, Blackberry and other OS saw the drop in sales. Windows phone market share fell to 1.7% in the third quarter of 2015 while it was 3% in the same quarter of last year. Android is at the top of the chart with 84.7% market share followed by iOS with 13.1% market share.
Despite the Windows 10 announcement, no one is interested in buying Windows phones. Apple’s iOS saw good growth in this time span. Android is still ruling the mind of people and saw strong sales in emerging markets. Samsung and Huawei brought too many sales to Android.
Despite the announcement of Windows 10, we expect Windows smartphone market share will continue to be a small portion of the overall smartphone OS market as consumers remain attracted by competing ecosystems,” Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner, said in a statement. “Microsoft smartphones will mainly focus on driving value for enterprise users.”
The report also talked about the worldwide mobile phone sales and counted it nearly 478 million. Samsung, Apple and Microsoft are ruling the chart respectively at the first, second and third place. Indian smartphone manufacturer Micromax is at the 10th place.
Other category includes lots of other vendors which include Coolpad, Meizu, Lava, Karbonn, Panasonic, Xolo, Intex and many others. Individually these companies have the very low market share.
Lenovo and Motorola both are working on good strategies. Lenovo is focusing on offering large battery phones in emerging markets where people expect good battery performance. Samsung is still ruling because of its brand value and good after sale support. Samsung mobiles are still very popular. Huawei continues its previous rank because of good sales in the home market but it is now facing tough competition from Lenovo in both Chinese and Indian market.
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Source: Gartner
