Yesterday, Apple revealed during its conference call that the company managed to sell a whopping 51 million iPhones during the last quarter of 2013, setting a new record for the Cupertino giant.
However, it seems Samsung maintains a huge lead in terms of smartphone sales when compared with Apple. According to a research by Strategy Analytics, the Korean OEM managed to sell a whopping 86 million smartphones in the last quarter.
The research suggest Samsung maintains a 29.6 percent global smartphone market share compared to 17.6 percent by Apple. It also mentions Chinese OEMs are gaining popularity especially in the low-end segment of the market, and Huawei Technologies and Leveno managed to grab the third and fourth place, respectively.
“There is clearly now more competition coming from the second-tier smartphone brands. Huawei, LG Electronics and Lenovo each grew their smartphone shipments around two times faster than the global industry average. Samsung and Apple will need to fight hard to hold off these and other hungry challengers during 2014,” Strategy Analytics analyst Linda Sui said.
Huawei sold almost 16.6 million handsets, giving it a 5.7 percent market share and the third spot which is quite decent for the Chinese OEM. Additionally, Lenovo sold 13.7 million and grabbed the fourth position with 4.7 percent market share.
For the year ending December 2013, the global smartphones shipments grew by 41 percent with a record 990 million smartphones sales. For 2013, Samsung sold a whopping 319.8 million smartphones grabbing a 32.4 percent market share, a rise of 1.8 percent when compared with 2012. On the other hand, Apple ended up with 153.5 million sales with 15.5 percent market share.
Source: Reuters
