When it comes to smartphone sales, it always does seem to be a battle between Samsung and Apple. Will, Samsung’s latest Galaxy Note or Galaxy S device sell more than the latest iPhone? However, the bigger picture is far more interesting, as although Apple only have a limited number of models on the market at any given time, Samsung has flooded the market with an unrivaled number of smartphones, variants and options. A method which has continually seen Samsung dominant the overall worldwide figures for smartphone sales and units shipped. A position which they have now managed to secure once more based on preliminary data for the third quarter of 2015.
The latest figures from IDC have now come through and detail the number of units shipped by the top five manufactures in the third quarter of this year. While Samsung do remain dominant, the numbers still do make for some interesting reading. In terms of the cold numbers, Samsung exerted their dominance on the market by shifting a total of 84.5 million units in the third quarter. In stark contrast, Apple only managed to shift a total of 48 million over the same period. Huawei who shipped the third most, came in with a total of 26.5 million units, while Lenovo trailed in fourth position with 18.8 million units. Although, Xiaomi was not too far behind Lenovo as they managed to shift a total of 18.3 million in the same period.
In spite of the dominance shown by Samsung in the third quarter, the underlying change year-over-year is a little bit more revealing. Samsung were actually one of the manufacturers to show the lowest changes year-over-year with a change of 6.1-percent. Although, with selling so many, a lowered figure for the top seller would seem the most likely outcome. Not to mention, it is still an improvement on the negative year-over-year change which was noted for Samsung in Q2. In contrast, Apple showed big gains with a year-over-year change which came in at the 22.2-percent level. However, Huawei was the big winner here with a year-over-year change of 60.9-percent. Lenovo’s change equated to 11.1-percent, while Xiaomi were slightly worse off than Samsung with a 5.6-percent year-over-year change. Interestingly, the “Others” managed to shift a total of 159.1 million units which represented a negative year-over-year change of 2.4-percent.
