Samsung versus Apple – a battle I never get tired of hearing about…other than the court battles. Samsung does dominate the world in total smartphone sales and nobody can argue that fact, although there are a few Chinese companies that are tightening the screws in the Far East…but I digress. Where Samsung has been coming in second to Apple was in the worldwide LTE only market – not including the emerging markets where very few LTE networks exist and where Apple has no cheaper, entry-level phones, and Samsung sells a lot of them.
As a lover of Android, I would love to jump up and down with great excitement and satisfaction, but there are two very logical explanations for this occurrence. Samsung had an April global launch of their newest flagship, the Galaxy S5 and at the same time many of the usual iPhone buyers slowed down buying in order to wait for the new iPhone 6 due out in September.
Those two facts helped Samsung gather a 32.2-percent share of the global LTE smartphone market between April-May-June of 2014. Based on Strategy Analytics statistics Samsung sold 28.6 million phones. Apple came in a close second with 31.9-percent – falling from 40.5-percent from the first quarter when they sold 32.7 million devices. LG Electronics came in a distant third at only 5.2-percent.
The three companies of Samsung, Apple and LG controlled almost 70-percent of the worldwide LTE smartphone business. However, there are so many factors involved in the up and down sales of Samsung and Apple – Samsung LTE sales have risen since the release of the Galaxy S5 and Apple’s device sales rose when it was released the iPhone in China during the first quarter 2014. Sales of the iPhone dipped during the second quarter, most likely because the customers were anticipating the iPhone 6 release in September.
It will be very interesting to see what happens during the second half of the year after the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and the iPhone 6 are released. Now I am realistic enough to know that the iPhone 6 will outsell the Galaxy Note 4 – by a large margin, but Samsung will be releasing other models as well, and we are not sure if Apple will release the iPhone 6 and a Phablet model as well. How close they stay in the number of sales will be a topic for January 2015 after the year end sales figures are tallied.
Please hook up with us on our Google+ Page and let us know your predictions for the iPhone 6 and Galaxy Note 4…as always, we would love to hear from you.