Now that 2016 is underway, there has been a number of announcements coming through from various data companies and manufacturers confirming, not just how the industry has performed during the last quarter, but also during the last year. The latest of which is now emerging from IDC and offers an insight into how the fourth quarter of 2015, as well as 2015 in total, performed in terms of worldwide smartphone shipments.
In terms of the numbers for Q4, according to the IDC, Samsung remains the largest worldwide smartphone shipper with a total of 85.6 million units shipped. Which equated to a market share for the fourth quarter of 21.4-percent and a year-over-year level of growth of 14-percent. Apple came in second and saw their total number of shipments reaching 74.8 million for the quarter. While this marked a new high for Apple and equated to an 18.7-percent market share, it only represented a 0.4-percent level of year-over-year growth. In contrast, although Xiaomi and Lenovo saw much lower levels of market share, they both saw the highest year-over-year levels of growth. In Huawei’s case, this resulted in 32.4 million units shipped in Q4, a market share of 8.1-percent and a year-over-year growth of 37-percent. For Lenovo, the Q4 shipments totaled 20.2 million, which was a market share of 5.1-percent and a year-over-year growth of 43.6-percent. Closing out the top 5 for Q4 was Xiaomi, who saw shipments totaling 18.2 million, a market share of 4.6-percent and a year-over-year growth of 10-percent.
Moving on to the year in general and leading Q4 helped Samsung to cement their position at the top smartphone manufacturer for 2015, with total shipments coming in at 324.8 million, a market share of 22.7-percent. While the numbers are impressive, the reality is that Samsung only saw a year-over-year growth of 2.1-percent. The lowest of the top 5. Apple who were second for the year shipped 231.5 million smartphones, which was a 16.2-percent market share and equated to a year-over-year growth of 20.2-percent. Huawei saw the biggest year-over-year growth of the top 5 (44.3-percent) and saw their total shipments reach 106.6 million smartphones, a 7.4-percent market share. Lenovo also saw a solid year-over-year performance (24.5-percent), with shipments reaching 74 million and a 5.2-percent market share. Likewise, Xiaomi shipped 70.8 million smartphones and saw a market share for 2015 of 4.9-percent and a year-over-year growth of 22.8-percent.
While the figures show mixed results for each of the big manufacturers, the overall results of the data suggest smartphones shipments are healthy. IDC notes that for Q4 a total of 399.5 million smartphones were shipped, which is a 5.7-percent increase compared to the year before. Even more impressively, for 2015, more than 1.4 billion (1432.9 million) smartphones were shipped. This marked a 10.1-percent increase from the previous year and saw 2015 become the highest on record for smartphone shipments.
