The global smartphone industry posted its slowest growth rate in six years in the second quarter. Chinese phone maker Huawei has now overtaken Microsoft and moved in to third place for global phone sales, behind Apple and Samsung.
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China-based Huawei grabbed third place with 9% market share, up from 6.8% in Q2 2014.
StrategyAnalytics noted that “Samsung dipped 7 percent annually and shipped 89.0 million mobile phones worldwide, capturing 20 percent market share in Q2 2015”. And the 30.6 million handsets that Huawei shipped during the quarter puts it well on track to top its internal goal of moving 100 million phones this year.
A report from Strategy Analytics shows that Samsung is still the world leader, enjoying 20.5pc of the global market, however, Apple and Huawei between them closed up by 7pc, with each now rising to 11pc and 7pc respectively.
Research firm Strategy Analytics late Wednesday reported Apple (AAPL) and China’s privately held Huawei gained share of the global mobile phone market in Q2, while both Samsung Electronics (005930KS) and Microsoft (MSFT) saw their respective share decline. Microsoft this month said it would take a $7.6 billion non-cash charge to write off unrecoverable goodwill of the 2013 purchase of the former Nokia unit, and said it would scale back its efforts in mobile devices.
Now languishing in fourth place in the table, Microsoft’s figures made for grim reading; the firm shipped 27.8 million handsets, down from 50.3 million in Q2 a year ago. Microsoft continues to lose ground in feature phones, while its Lumia smartphone portfolio is in a holding pattern awaiting the launch of new Windows 10 models later this year.
StrategyAnalytics notes at the bottom of their report that “The term “Mobile Phone” is defined as smartphones plus feature phones combined”. Apple came next, growing its share to 10.9 percent from 8.2 percent.
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“Xiaomi has good distribution channels and competitive pricing in its large home market of China, enabling it to stay in front of Lenovo-Motorola, (which) is struggling with the transition from 3G to 4G smartphones in China and the U.S.”, Oh said.
