It seems like no smartphone company’s sales are more closely watched than Samsung’s. Maybe that is one of the curses of being number one for so long – critics love to scrutinize the situation, but it doesn’t help that Samsung is always boasting about their sales. Samsung has always been the undisputed king of Android smartphones and devices in general. They always had such a large array of devices at different price levels that they could afford the luxury of being number one in the US and Europe as well as the emerging nations of China and India. However, many things have changed at both ends of the food chain – at the upper end, Apple released their new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus with larger displays and at the lower end, China and India are being invaded by high quality and low priced devices from Xiaomi, Huawei, Micromax and more – stealing sales from Samsung from both ends of the price spectrum.
According to market research firm Strategy Analytics, during the second quarter Samsung Electronics became the largest smartphone vendor in Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific and Europe, selling 71.7 million smartphones. However, in conquering most of the world, they were unable to capture that coveted top spot in the US, coming in at number two in the US behind Apple. We would have to go back a year ago when Samsung widen their gap to almost 10-percent over Apple in the US when their Galaxy S5 was released. But since the release of the new iPhone 6, Samsung has played second fiddle to Apple for four consecutive quarters. Even their critically successful Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge launch could not help them overtake Apple in the US.
On the other side of the world, Chinese giant, Huawei, managed to steal the number three spot in the global rankings as they continue to grow and expand their sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Xiaomi continues to stay the course and grabbed the number four spot as sales remain strong in their home country, China, and showing strong growth in the Asian countries. What was once Samsung’s world is continually evolving as new manufacturers enter the world marketplace.