Samsung and Apple have enjoyed dominance of the smartphone market for some time. But that is changing according to data from Gartner. Both companies saw their quarterly shipments fall compared to the same period last year with their rivals Huawei, Oppo and Vivo all showing solid growth over the same period.
Although shipments were up overall, Samsung, Apple and the largest vendor of all, “Others” all saw their share fall. And while Huawei and Vivo did well, the big mover was Oppo, which almost doubled it’s sales volumes.
While Apple and Samsung are still dominant, neither has been able to gain a massive foothold in China. And the challengers have been buoyed by some nice devices that offer a balance between price and features.
Of course, sales numbers are just one part of the equation. As Apple’s fans are quick to point out, Apple’s profits are solid and their margin per unit remains quite high. In contrast, the 86.3% market share held by Android (Windows Phone and Blackberry’s share by OS is negligible) is influenced by that platforms strength in low cost and pre-paid handsets.
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2 responses to “Is Apple and Samsung’s Smartphone Dominance Coming To An End?”
These numbers aren’t useful without factoring each company’s release cycle. Apple is halfway between releases and Q1 was immediately before Samsung’s biggest flagship release in April. Sales always dip just prior to a major release as people hold off.
Regardless of the company, it takes a special kind of blindness to think high margins are in any way a good thing for consumers.
Well they certainly arent threatened by windows phone am i right? 🙂