Android continued its dominance in the smartphone market and accounted for a record 84.6% share of global smartphone shipments in Q2 of 2014, according to research by Strategy Analytics. Global smartphone shipments reached 295.2 million units in Q2 said the report.
“Global smartphone shipments grew 27 percent annually from 233.0 million units in Q2 2013 to 295.2 million in Q2 2014. We estimate worldwide smartphone growth has halved during the past year, from 49 percent a year ago to 27 percent today. ”
said Linda Sui, Director at Strategy Analytics in an official release.
Android accounted for 249.6 million smartphones shipped in the quarter, up from 186.8 million a year earlier, and about seven times more than the 35.2 million Apple iOS phones shipped. The market share of Apple’s iOS slipped to 11.9% in the quarter from 13.4% in the same quarter last year. Microsoft saw Windows Phone sales decline to eight million units in the quarter from 8.9 million a year ago resulting into a dropped market share to 2.7% from 3.8%.
Giving insight about smartphone vendor market share Strategy Analytics said that Samsung remained the world’s largest smartphone vendor, with an estimated 74.5 million phones sold as compared to 76.0 million a year earlier. However, its market share dipped to 25.2 percent from 32.6 percent a year ago. Apple also lost share, despite growing shipments, accounting for 11.9 percent of the global smartphone market versus 13.4 percent a year ago.
Huawei and Lenovo claimed third and fourth spot with 6.8% and 5.4% market share respectively. However, the most surprising entry was Xiaomi which captured a record 5.1% percent market share in the second quarter to become the fifth largest smartphone vendor in the world for the first time ever. The 4 year-old Chinese company shipped 15.1 million units in the second quarter of the year, more than triple its shipments of 4.1 million units just a year ago. Xiaomi garnered a positive response in India for its Mi3 smartphone, $13 fitness MiBand and MiPad.
Earlier this week IDC revealed its numbers for Q2 smartphone sale and they fall in line to that of the Strategy Analytics. However, IDC did not mention Xiaomi and put LG in the fifth spot instead.