IC Insights, a leading semiconductor market research company based in the US, has released a report detailing the top 12 smartphone suppliers in the world for 2016. According to the report, the top spot this year is held by South Korean giant, Samsung, which was able to sell 81.5 million smartphones in the first quarter of the year and is forecast to sell 320.0 million smartphones by the end of the year. This is most likely helped by strong sales growth of the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. Samsung might be number 1 on the chart but their total smartphone sales are expected to drop by 1% from 2015. Apple on the other hand took the number 2 spot with 51.6 million smartphones sold in the first quarter of 2016. Their sales for the year are expected to drop by 3% compared to 2015. Apple is the only non-Android smartphone supplier in the top 12.
However, the list compiled by IC Insights is dominated by China-based smartphone suppliers, taking 8 out of the 12 spots in the list. The China-based smartphone suppliers are, Huawei at number 3, OPPO at number 4, Xiaomi at number 5, Vivo at number 6, ZTE at number 8, Lenovo at number 9 and TCL and Meizu at spots 10 and 11 respectively. The China based suppliers which made the most improvements in terms of position from last year are OPPO, Vivo and Meizu which were at positions 8, 10 and 14 respectively last year. Lenovo on the other hand has dropped to 9th place this year from a high 4th spot last year. The company which just recently launched the Moto Z line, only managed to sell 10.9 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2016 and their sales for the year are expected to drop 26% from 2015. Also, for the first time ever, India-based smartphone supplier, Micromax has joined the top 12 list, selling 5.0 million devices in the first quarter of the year and projected to sell 25.0 million devices by years end. This is a 74% increase from last year.
Three companies which were in the top 12 ranking in 2015 have dropped out this year. The companies are Japan-based Sony, US-based Microsoft and China-based Coolpad. These three companies only managed to sell 3.4, 2.3, and 4.0 million smartphones respectively in the first quarter of 2016. IC Insights expects Microsoft to sell less than 15.0 million units by the end of 2016. However, the company expects total worldwide smartphone sales will increase by 5% from 1.43 billions units in 2015 to 1.5 billion in 2016.