Gartner announced on Tuesday that Apple topped Samsung in smartphone sales during the December quarter of 2014. While Apple has long made between most and all of the hardware profits in the smartphone industry, this is the first time in many years that Apple can claim to be the top smartphone maker in mere units-sold terms.
Apple itself reported sales of 74.5 million iPhones during the December quarter, Apple's first fiscal quarter. Gartner, using its own metrics, said Apple sold 74.8 million. Using Apple's figure, IDC released its own report in February that said Samsung beat Apple with 75.1 million devices.
"Apple's first ever large-screen phones continued to see huge demand with sales in China and U.S., growing at 56 percent and 88 percent, respectively," Gartner said in its report. "Apple's strong ecosystem and its new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus drove strong replacements within the iOS base. These new smartphones also offered new users, who are looking for larger screen phones, a strong alternative to Android."
| Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor in 4Q14 (Thousands of Units) | ||||
|
Company |
4Q14 Units |
4Q14 Market Share (%) |
4Q13 Units |
4Q13 Market Share (%) |
|
Apple |
74,832 |
20.4 |
50,224 |
17.8 |
|
Samsung |
73,032 |
19.9 |
83,317 |
29.5 |
|
Lenovo* |
24,300 |
6.6 |
16,465 |
5.8 |
|
Huawei |
21,038 |
5.7 |
16,057 |
5.7 |
|
Xiaomi |
18,582 |
5.1 |
5,598 |
2.0 |
|
Others |
155,701.6 |
42.4 |
111,204.3 |
39.3 |
|
Total |
367,484.5 |
100.0 |
282,866.2 |
100.0 |
Source: Gartner (March 2015)
*The results for Lenovo include sales of mobile phones by Lenovo and Motorola.
Samsung
Samsung has been beset at the high end by Apple's large screen iPhone and iPhone 6 Plus. At the same time, Xiaomi has been assaulting Samsung's supremacy a the low end, where the South Korean company has always sold the bulk of its smartphone devices.
It should also be noted all of Apple's iPhone sales are at the high end, which is why Apple routinely claims almost all the hardware profits in the entire industry.
"Samsung's performance in the smartphone market deteriorated further in the fourth quarter of 2014, when it lost nearly 10 percentage points in market share," Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner, said in a statement. "Samsung continues to struggle to control its falling smartphone share, which was at its highest in the third quarter of 2013. This downward trend shows that Samsung's share of profitable premium smartphone users has come under significant pressure."
Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner, added: "With Apple dominating the premium phone market and the Chinese vendors increasingly offering quality hardware at lower prices, it is through a solid ecosystem of apps, content and services unique to Samsung devices that Samsung can secure more loyalty and longer-term differentiation at the high end of the market."
The thing is that Samsung has tried this strategy and failed to execute in a way that mattered. Samsung's own software offerings are little more than me-too services that are inferior to the Google services they imitate. The company is just another Android maker, making anything "unique to Samsung" a fleeting aspiration.
2014
Still, Samsung maintained its position as #1 smartphone vendor for the year, by a lot. Samsung sold some 307.6 million smartphones in 2014, according to Gartner. Apple took the second spot with 191.4 million devices.
This shows just how hard Samsung fell in the second half of the year. We should also remember that it remains to be seen if Apple can repeat its December quarter performance.
Table 2
| Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor in 2014 (Thousands of Units) | ||||
|
Company |
2014 Units |
2014 Market Share (%) |
2013 Units |
2013 Market Share (%) |
|
Samsung |
307,597 |
24.7 |
299,795 |
30.9 |
|
Apple |
191,426 |
15.4 |
150,786 |
15.5 |
|
Lenovo* |
81,416 |
6.5 |
57,424 |
5.9 |
|
Huawei |
68,081 |
5.5 |
46,609 |
4.8 |
|
LG Electronics |
57,661 |
4.6 |
46,432 |
4.8 |
|
Others |
538,710 |
43.3 |
368,675 |
38.0 |
|
Total |
1,244,890 |
100.0 |
969,721 |
100.0 |
Source: Gartner (March 2015)
*The results for Lenovo include sales of mobile phones by Lenovo and Motorola.