Samsung's smartphone sales drop while Apple gains

BANGALORE, INDIA: Gartner, Inc. said worldwide smartphone sales recorded the slowest growth rate since 2013 in the second quarter of 2015.

Worldwide sales of smartphones to end users totaled 330 million units, an increase of 13.5 percent over the same period in 2014.

"While demand for lower-cost 3G and 4G smartphones continued to drive growth in emerging markets, overall smartphone sales remained mixed region by region in the second quarter of 2015," said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner.

Samsung lost 4.3 percentage points in market share and declined 5.3 percent in unit sales in the second quarter of 2015. Huawei recorded the highest sales growth rate of 46.3 percent, for overseas sales and 4G smartphone sales in China.

iPhone sales increased 36 percent, which helped Apple gain 2.4 percentage points in market share. Apple recorded strong iPhone replacements in both emerging and mature markets — and particularly in China. Total iPhone sales in China grew 68 percent to 11.9 million units.

In the smartphone operating system (OS) market, Android's global share was affected by the weak performance of China in the second quarter of 2015 and the strong performance in China of Apple, which has taken share from Android for the last three quarters.

Worldwide mobile phone sales to end users totaled 446 million units during the second quarter of 2015. The performance was flat (0.4 per cent) year over year.