Shipping Phones
According to market research firm DRAMeXchange, Samsung Electronics recorded a 27.8 percent share in the global smartphone market in the first quarter of this year on a shipment basis, while Apple followed it with a market share of 19.9 percent. The gap between the two narrowed to 1.5 percentage points in the last quarter of 2014, but widened again to 7.9 percentage points as of the end of Q1, 2015.
Apple released the iPhone 6 in September last year to nip at the heels of Samsung Electronics, which was recording the largest smartphone shipment in the world for three years in a row. However, Samsung Electronics succeeded in increasing its share by 3.1 percentage points quarter-on-quarter from January to March this year, whereas Apple’s share dropped by 3.3 percentage points during the same period.
According to DRAMeXchange, the two companies were followed by Huawei (7.0 percent), LG Electronics (6.2 percent), and Lenovo (6.0 percent).
In the meantime, Samsung Electronics released the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge in the Chinese market on April 17. It is expected that the new models’ performance in the world’s largest smartphone market will determine the prosperity of the smartphone business of Samsung Electronics for the time being.