The smartphone craze does not show any signs of slowing down. According to a recent report, global smartphone sales and shipments hit a new record peak in 2014. In addition, analysts predict that they will continue to increase in 2015 as well.
A research conducted by TrendForce showed that last year global smartphone shipments reached the record 1.167 billion. Compared to 2013, that is a rise by 25.9%.
One particularly interesting finding is that Chinese technology companies dominated the smartphone market. Six out of the ten top smartphone brands in 2014 were China-based. Also, for just twelve months, Chine-based smartphone makers sold a combined 453 million devices worldwide. As a result, their share on the global smartphone market increased by almost 40%.
The highest ranked Chinese smartphone maker is Lenovo. The company, which recently purchased Motorola, has increased its share by 3% to nearly 8% in total. That was enough to make Lenovo the smartphone vendor with the third largest market share in 2014.
So does this mean that the heydays of Apple and Samsung are over? According to researcher, that statement would be nowhere near the truth. Unsurprisingly, at the very top of the smartphone market continue to be Samsung and Apple. The South Korean company, however, takes the lead with a share of 28%. Apple remains second with a stable market share of 16.4%. The U.S. technology giant has sold over 191 million units in 2014 worldwide.
Furthermore, Apple and Samsung have nothing to worry about it, since together they shipped 518 million units in 2014 alone. In contrast, Chinese smartphone companies, which are quite abundant in their number, managed to ship a combined 453 million devices. According to analyst, this gap illustrates that the competition on the smartphone market is not as fierce as it used to be.
The report states China’s rise will continue to be quite noticeable in 2015 as well. Analysts predict that smartphone vendors from the Asian country will ship over 531 million devices this year. If this forecast is right, the global smartphone market share of Chinese companies could reach 41.1% by the end 2015. Researches also expect that this year smartphone shipments will hit 1.29 billion.
