U.S. research and advisory firm Gartner recently issued its latest smartphone market analysis for the third quarter of the year, revealing that global sales have increased by three percent compared to the same time frame in 2016. Furthermore, Samsung appears to have retained the top spot throughout Q3 2017 and as expected, the Korean OEM is followed by Apple at second, and three Chinese smartphone makers – Huawei, OPPO, and Xiaomi. According to Gartner, all top five OEMs with the exception of Apple have experienced double-digit growth in Q3 compared to a year ago, and among them, Xiaomi achieved the strongest growth of around 80 percent.
The Gartner-made report suggests that Samsung managed to sell a little over 85 million smartphones in the third quarter of the year, leading to an increased market share of 22.3 percent compared to 19.3 percent a year ago. Apple, which retained the second spot, reportedly sold 45.4 million devices in the same time frame, representing an insignificant 0.3 percent increase from Q3 2016 when its sales figures topped 43 million. The Cupertino tech giant now holds 11.9 percent of the smartphone market, up from 11.6 percent last year. The third place goes to Huawei who managed to sell 36.5 million smartphones up from 32.4 million last year, and the company’s handsets now account for 9.5 percent of the market, up from 8.7 percent a year ago. OPPO remains the fourth most successful smartphone brand in the world with nearly 30 million devices sold in Q3 2017, and now holding 7.7 percent of the market instead of 6.6 percent from a year ago. Lastly, while Xiaomi remained the fifth most popular smartphone brand in terms of global sales with 26.8 million devices sold, the OEM experienced the strongest growth increasing its market share from 4.0 percent of last year to 7.0 percent in Q3 2017.
As for what regions have bought the largest volume of smartphones in the third quarter of the year, Greater China continues to occupy the top spot with 107 million units sold, despite the fact that it lost some ground compared to a year ago when a little over 120 million devices have been distributed in the region. Meanwhile, Emerging Asia-Pacific experienced a growth from 19.1 percent to 21.3 percent as sales over Q3 2017 grew to 81.5 million. In North America, 47.5 million devices have been sold in the third quarter up from 42.7 million a year ago, and Western Europe also purchased 36 million devices up from 32.9 million last year. The number of devices sold in Latin America was slightly increased to 33.5 million up from 31.1 million in 2016. With the holiday season just around the corner and following the recent Black Friday and Cyber Monday discounts, Gartner expects yearly smartphone sales to hit 1.57 billion before the end of 2017. Whether Samsung will retain its top spot or lose it to Apple in Q4 remains to be seen.
