Market Share Dive
Samsung Electronics’ share of global smartphone sales dropped sharply to 10 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014, while Apple’s reached 50 percent.
According to Strategy Analytics (SA), a U.S. market research company, Apple ranked 1st in the share of global smartphone sales in the fourth quarter last year, accounting for 48.9 percent.
However, Samsung Electronics took up 17.2 percent of the world's smartphone market in the fourth quarter in terms of revenue. This is the first time the company’s share in a quarter dropped to the 10 percent level since the fourth quarter of 2011.
Samsung Electronics was also outpaced by Apple even in the annual share. Apple ranked top in the share with 37.6 percent, while Samsung Electronics ranked 2nd with 25.1 percent.
With successive hits of the Galaxy series, Samsung Electronics has succeeded in narrowing the gap with Apple since 2011. In 2013, the market share of Samsung Electronics jumped to 34.1 percent, and chased down Apple with 34.2 percent.
However, as Apple released the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus with bigger screens last year, the gap in the market share of the year between the two companies widened once again.
Meanwhile, LG Electronics ranked 3rd in market share with 4.3 percent last year, followed by Huawei with 3.8 percent, Sony with 3.7 percent, and Xiaomi with 3.3 percent.