Global Smartphone Depression Sinks Apple’s iPhone Market Share to Just 15%
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Well we already knew Apple had been having a pretty rough week, you know, as the company recounted details about a ho-hum quarter last Tuesday during the quarterly conference call with investors. And now it seems the bits-and-pieces details about exactly where Apple currently stands in the mobile device market are beginning to make their way to the surface.
For instance, we have this latest bit of information, originally uncovered by independent research firm, IDC, which reveals that Apple’s global market share has fallen by 15.3% within the March quarter of 2016. Moreover, this statistic is consistent with IDC’s assessment of a current depression materializing in the global smartphone market.
During Tuesday’s conference call, Apple reported a mere 51.2 million iPhone shipments during the 3-month quarter ending March 26th. This modest quantity, down just a cool 10 million (compared to approximately 61.2 million shipments) during the same quarter of 2015.
As for total smartphone shipments, by all manufacturers, the total shipments for this quarter was approximately 334.9 million units — a modest increase of 500,000 units from this same quarter of last year.
“But wait,” you might be thinking, “if Apple only shipped 51.2 million iPhones, and yet over 334.9 million units have been shipped in all, where are these other handsets coming from?”
Great question! So it appears that, as has been the case for a while now, South Korean Telecom-giant, Samsung, continues to lead the way — having shipped a whopping 81.9 million smartphones during the March quarter. This number gives Samsung a 24.5% piece of the smartphone market share pie.
The other contenders, rounding out the top five, are Chinese manufacturers Huawei, Oppo, and Vivo. To that end, we’ve seen a lot of increased competition among the various Chinese smartphone manufacturers recently, as they continue, relentless in their quest, to penetrate the global market.
In any event, Huawei shipped the most of all — clocking in at 27.5 million units for the quarter. Huawei, who is most vigorously trying to compete with Samsung and Apple in the U.S. market, clocked in at an 8.2% market share this year — up a full 3% from the March quarter, 2015.
Just to give you an idea about the scope of competition in the global smartphone market — this year’s list of top 5 global vendors sees the inclusion of two newcomers (Oppo and Vivo) that replaced both Lenovo and Xiaomi, who previously held their spots on the list. Even still, Apple continues to be a global leader in the smartphone race — a position which likely stands to only magnify as we progress into the coming months, and are ultimately graced with Apple’s iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, and possibly an iPhone 7 Pro.
Do you love Apple’s iPhone or do you believe anything from Samsung is inherently better?
Let us know in the comments below.
