Gartner has just released its numbers for the smartphone industry in Q3 2014 and with no surprise, it sees Chinese phone manufacturers on the rise, while the big boys like Samsung and Nokia continue to lose their market share. Out of the five top smartphone vendors, three of them are Chinese, kicking LG out of the scene.
Of course, like many reports we’ve been seeing, despite the decline, Samsung is still the top smartphone vendor, followed by Apple. Xiaomi and Huawei are constantly battling for the third spot while Lenovo sits comfortably at number five.
Samsung takes the greatest hit when it comes to the sales for the third quarter of 2014. The feature phones by the Korean company has decreased by 10.8% year on year. The demand for Samsung’s smartphones has also weakened, especially in China, which see a decline of 28.6% – China is the biggest market for Samsung.
Meanwhile, the sales of iPhones has grown by 26% in Q3 2014, mostly thanks to the launch of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. Gartner is expecting this to grow this holiday season, and expects Apple to have the biggest ever fourth quarter sales.
As for the Chinese players, Huawei is now number three, followed closely by Xiaomi, which has the highest growth of the quarter. It grew by an impressive 336% thanks to its strong performance in China where it became the market leader, and of course, its plan for world domination.
“Samsung and Nokia experienced sharp double-digit declines in the third quarter, which let Apple get closer to Nokia, with only 5 million units separating these two vendors. The gap is also narrowing between the third and fourth positions, and the fourth quarter could be decisive for Huawei and LG.” — Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner.
Finally, as for the mobile phone industry as a whole, Gartner sees that the sales of feature phone continues to decline (by 25%), while the demand for smartphone is on the rise (up 20%). The breakdown is now 66% smartphone and 34% feature phones, and the decline affects Samsung and Nokia the most.
Check out Gartner to see the full report. What do you think about the mobile phone industry now?
