Samsung falters, Apple cleans up in phones

Emerging markets, such as China and Indonesia, drove the industry’s growth last year and are expected to continue to do so, says SA.

One billion Android smartphones were shipped – up from 800,000 units in 2013 – compared to 192.7 million iOS smartphones representing 15% share.

“Microsoft shipped 38.8 million smartphones for a relatively niche 3 percent marketshare worldwide in 2014, ” says SA’s Woody Oh, “Microsoft still lacks multiple major hardware partners to build its phones, while Microsoft’s retail presence in important countries like China remains tiny.”

Q4 saw 375 million smartphone shipments, says Juniper Research.

Samsung shipped an estimated 315 million smartphones in 2014 accounting for 25% of all smartphone shipments, however the company reported its first annual earnings decline in 3 years and Q4 shipments fell 3% to 76 million.

Meanwhile, Apple posted a record quarter of 74.5m iPhone sales, representing q-o-q growth of 90% and y-o-y growth of 46% compared to Q4 2013.

With the demand for iPhones driven by the 6 and 6 Plus models, the company for the first time ever, sold more iPhones in China than in the US.

Despite closing in on Samsung in Q4, Apple had a market share of 15% for the full year in 2014.

Lenovo-Motorola combined is estimated to have shipped over 90m smartphones in 2014, managing to improve its market share to just over 7%.

Microsoft, meanwhile reported a 10.5 million Lumia shipments in Q4 2014, driven by low-cost models.

Huawei improved its market share y-o-y, shipping over 70 million smartphones in 2014, with the Honor line of devices accounting for nearly 28% of the total.