“Consequently, much of this year’s growth momentum in the smartphone market was concentrated in the third quarter”, the firm said, adding that it estimates that worldwide smartphone shipments in the third quarter grew 9.1 percent from the second quarter, totaling 332 million units.
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According to the new forecast, Samsung’s year-over-year smartphone shipment totals are expected to drop one percent in 2015 thanks in part to a reduced number of predicted Galaxy S6 shipments.
Samsung remained the top brand, accounting for 25 percent of global shipments in the third quarter.
Samsung may face its first ever year-over-year decline in smartphone shipments this year, a new market report from TrendForce has indicated.
Samsung’s latest flagship, the Galaxy S7, is likely to be unveiled six months from now, but speculations have arisen the upcoming smartphone will be copying the iPhone 6s’ ForceTouch display with a similar technology of its own dubbed the ClearForce pressure-sensitive display. Also, approximately 10 million units of the newly launched flagship device, Note 5, will be shipped by the end of this year. Most notable of all is Huawei, which did above what analysts were expecting.
Shipments of Samsung phone are projected to decline 1 percent to 323.5 million units in 2015, while rival Apple is likely to ship 223.7 million iPhones with 16-percent growth, according to the report.
Huawei’s shipment performance in the third quarter was much above expectations. Xiaomi, which also hoped to hit the 100 million shipment mark for the year, is expected to fall short of its target but is still forecast to achieve 14.6 percent growth in annual shipment totals.
In spite of Xiaomi’s rather unsuccessful attempt to enter the high-end market with the Michigan Note, the company is still on track to sell a lot of mid-range devices like the Redmi Note 2 and Michigan 4c in the second half of 2015.
By contrast, Huawei is seen reaching growth of as much as 40 percent year-over-year, to 110 million units. Lenovo is now undergoing a company restructuring process, which will provide an opportunity for its smartphone business to start afresh next year.
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The top five vendors by shipments worldwide and the top five Chinese smartphone brands are shown in the Trendforce charts, below. The company is expected to ship a nudge below 100 million units in 2015. Unlike other vendors, OPPO and VIVO are more focused on strengthening their relationships with retail agents, including putting efforts in developing profit-sharing arrangements. Korea’s LG is seen increasing its shipments about 8 percent from 2014, the research firm projected.
