The global smartphone shipments in 2014 report from TrendForce is out and like the trend we’ve been seeing for the past few reports from various companies, Samsung’s shipments continues to falls though, the are still hanging on to the top spot, followed by Apple, and a lot of Chinese companies.
According to TrendForce, the global smartphone shipments totalled to 1.167 billion units in the whole of 2014, increasing by 25.9 year-on-year. Almost 40% of the total shipments are from Chinese manufacturers with 453.4 million units shipped last year. Still, the number is less than the total shipment from the two leaders, Samsung and Apple, with a combined shipment of 518 million units.
Individually, the market share for Samsung fell from 32.5% to 28.% year-on-year, and is forecasted to continue falling for 2015. Apple on the other hand managed to retain its spot pretty well, dropping only a tiny bit from 16.6% in 2013 to 16.4% in 2014, and is expected to maintain this number for 2015. So who’s been eating into Samsung’s piece of the pie? TrendForce says that the high-end Galaxy Note series faced stiff competition from the iPhone 6 Plus, while its mid-range and low-end phones were undercut by Chinese brands.
Lenovo (and Motorola) takes the third spot, and interestingly enough, LG seems to have climbed up a spot, overtaking Huawei as the fourth largest smartphone vendor based on market share. Xiaomi is probably the most interesting one of them all that went from the “Others” list (which accounts for 20.9% of market share in 2013) in 2013 to the sixth spot in 2014, and is projected to climb up further in 2015. The other players in the top 10 table are Coolpad, Sony, ZTE and TCL. The top vendors in 2013 that are missing from the 2014 list are Nokia and RIM.
“Chinese brands represent six of the global top ten due to their high C/P products and rising domestic demands in China”
MWC 2015 is only about a month away and we’re expecting a whole bunch of exciting announcements from the big players like Samsung, Sony, HTC and such. Will these announcements help Samsung, LG and Sony retain their spot? Will Xiaomi continue to soar up high? What are your thoughts about this report?
(Source: TrendForce via:PhoneArena)
