- Quarterly smartphone shipments increased by 23% y-o-y, to over 350 million worldwide.
- Apple ships 61.2 million iPhones, with China the key growth engine.
- Samsung decline continues to slow, with 4% y-o-y decreases this quarter.
Hampshire, UK – 29th April 2014 - Leading mobile analyst firm Juniper Research estimates that the number of smartphone shipments reached 350.9 million in Q1 2015, a y-o-y growth of over 20%.
Although Samsung retained leadership of the smartphone market, the company’s shipments fell to just under 82 million; furthermore, although its market share rose q-o-q to 23%, this is well down on the 29% it commanded at this time last year. Meanwhile, increased sales in its smartphone division – bolstered by uptake of the A-series – were in part offset by declining tablet and featurephone sales.
S6 Expected to Boost Samsung Sales
Nevertheless, Juniper Research expects Samsung’s performance to improve in the coming months – the S6 and the S6 Edge have had a better reception than the S5, as well as boasting new features in the case of the Edge, and have several international markets to break into.
Apple Achieve a Record Q1
Conversely, Apple achieved record Q1 iPhone shipments of more than 61 million, up by 40% y-o-y. In large part, growth was fuelled by a dramatic surge in sales across Greater China, where device sales rose by 71% compared with Q1 2014, resulting in revenues for the region of $16.8 billion.
BlackBerry, Microsoft See Falling Sales as China is the Market to Be In
- BlackBerry’s decline continued, with shipments at an estimated 1.5 million for the quarter.
- Hard Times for Microsoft as Lumia stands alone –cancelling the Asha brand has resulted in an overall year-on-year decline of nearly 40% to less than 9 million units.
- Competition among Chinese vendors intensifies, with Xiaomi posting 14.2 million devices, and Lenovo relaunching the Motorola brand in China in January.
Juniper Research anticipates a big quarter ahead for several vendors – the Apple Watch is accompanied by several flagship releases, such as Huawei’s P8, and HTC One M9 and the Xiaomi Mi5.
Juniper Research provides research and analytical services to the global hi-tech communications sector, providing consultancy, analyst reports and industry commentary.
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