Samsung remains smartphone leader, but iPhone and Chinese brands grow faster

Despite predictions of Samsung’s imminent fall from grace, the Korean giant held on to its crown in 2015. Research firm IDC says Samsung “remained the leader in the worldwide smartphone market for the quarter and the year,” shipping 324.8 million devices last year, in its latest report detailing Q4 data.

Samsung’s Galaxy S6, pictured, is set to be replaced by the S7 next month. Photo credit: Samsung.

Samsung saw only 2.1 percent growth year-on-year as Apple’s iPhone wooed shoppers with money to spare. Meanwhile, an array of Chinese brands undercut Samsung on price in the mid-range and low-end segments of the smartphone market. Apple saw 20.2 percent annual growth, while Huawei showed the strongest growth of all, rocketing 37 percent.

Globally, 1.43 billion smartphones were shipped in 2015. That’s a record high, up from 1.3 billion in 2014.

Top 5

Here’s the top five globally along with their smartphone shipment numbers for Q4 2015:

• 1st: Samsung – 85.6 million
• 2nd: Apple – 74.8 million
• 3rd: Huawei – 32.4 million
• 4th: Lenovo – 20.2 million
• 5th: Xiaomi – 18.2 million

Xiaomi’s Mi Note (left) next to the iPhone 6.

LG came in sixth. LG plus all the other brands took up 42.1 percent of smartphone shipments, resulting in a Q4 total of 399.5 million phones.

Xiaomi’s well-documented struggles in 2015 – including missing its 80 million phone sales target for the year – played into the hands of compatriot brands like Huawei, Lenovo, ZTE, and Oppo.

Huawei “became the fourth mobile phone vendor in history to ship over 100 million smartphones in a year – preceded only by Nokia, Samsung, and Apple,” notes the IDC report.