Samsung remained the dominant force in smartphones in the second quarter, with an average of 74.6 million units shipped according to figures from three research companies.
Analysts at Strategy Analytics, Juniper Research and IDC all placed Samsung at the top of the smartphone shipments tree during the quarter, with Apple firmly rooted in second place. The average of the three shipment estimates for the U.S. vendor was 35.1 million units during the quarter.
While Samsung and Apple remained dominant in the global smartphone market, analysts at all three companies noted the pair lost market share during the second quarter. Chinese vendors Huawei and Lenovo were cited as challengers by all three research houses, while Strategy Analytics also named Xiaomi as a top five player during the period with shipments of 15.1 million units.
That figure is in contrast to Juniper Research and IDC, which placed Samsung's domestic rival LG Electronics in fifth place on shipments of 14.5 million units during the period.
Strategy Analytics and IDC concurred that Apple is currently in something of a holding pattern, as consumers hold off buying the current iPhone ahead of the expected launch of Apple's latest smartphone in the back half of the year. Juniper Research, meanwhile, said the bulk of the U.S. vendor's shipments in the second quarter came from emerging markets, with shipments up 55 per cent in BRIC countries alone.
The research company also predicted Huawei will hit its annual smartphone shipments target of 80 million units after shipping 20 million units in the second quarter, and 34.3 million units in the first half of 2014.
All three companies agreed the second quarter was a record in terms of total smartphone shipments, with an average of 293.5 million units shipped during the period.
For more:
- see Strategy Analytics figures
- read Juniper Research's release
- see this IDC announcement
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