Every few months or so, the IDC (the International Data Corporation) provides information surrounding numerous markets and of course, the one we’re most interested in are figures for the smartphone market. Seeing as Q1 of 2014 just ended, the IDC has put together data collected from the last few months, as well as compared it to last year’s figures, too. The headlining figure is that the smartphone market – worldwide – grew by 28.6% according to the IDC’s findings, with 281.5 million smartphones shipped all over the world in the last few months. This is a 28.6% increase on the 218.8 Million smartphones shipped for the same period last year.
Statistics are funny things to work with, but there’s no doubting their validity, facts are facts after all. The intricacies of the smartphone market make for interesting reading, such as who made the Top Five smartphone vendors list this quarter. Unsurprisingly, Samsung and Apple are still seeing gold, swallowing up the vast majority of smartphone shipments with Samsung shipping almost twice as many smartphones than Apple in the Q1 2014. Samsung’s share for the past quarter is a reported 30.2%, leaving Apple with 15.5% market share for the quarter. Predictably, this left a number of other companies fighting for whatever’s left. Lenovo, LG and Huawei all finished the quarter with similar results, with Lenovo and LG taking 4.6% and 4.4% market share respectively. Meanwhile, Huawei holds on to their third spot with 4.9% market share.
The IDC’s latest findings for Q1 2014 aren’t exactly surprising, but it is sad to see HTC once again absent from the Top Five list. Still, with Samsung and Apple’s dominance continuing, it leaves other manufacturers battling over what’s left and it looks like Lenovo is making a play, climbing up the ladder. Lenovo’s rise in the smartphone market is impressive considering they’re only really a player in Asia, while LG sells smartphones all over the world. The smartphone market might have grown when compared to Q1 2013 figures, but the really interesting figures will come later in the year as flagship devices like the Galaxy S5, HTC One, G3 and others really start to take off.
