Looks Like Samsung Is Winning The Smartphones Sales Competition

Data shows that Samsung has now overtaken Apple in smartphones sale worldwide. According to new data from Strategy Analytics, at the end of the March quarter, Samsung had sold 83.2 million smartphones while Apple sold 61 million iPhones.

“Samsung continued to face challenges in Asia and elsewhere, but its global performance has stabilized sufficiently well this quarter to overtake Apple and recapture first position as the world’s largest smartphone vendor by volume,” Strategy Analytics Executive Director Neil Mawston told Reuters.

In the chart above, Samsung accounted for 24.1% of the smartphone market during the period, down from 31% a year before. Meanwhile, Apple jumped from 15.3% in the March 2014 quarter to 17.7% in the same period this year.

Lenovo-Motorola comes a distant third with 18 million in sales while others (a combination of other smartphone makers) recorded 164 million in sales. Overall, 345 million smartphones were estimated to have been sold in the first quarter of 2015.

The news is not that rosy for Samsung though as it reported that its net profit fell 39% in the first quarter of this year and this marks a sixth consecutive quarterly decline according to a CNBC report. This could be as a result of “fierce” competition from other Asian players like Xiaomi in China and Micromax in India.

In the African market, recent Lumia smartphone releases have seen a surge in sales primarily because of low cost as well other features like dual-SIM capabilities. Other smaller brands (primarily Android) machines from Asia have started seeing gradual growth in sales.

An IDC report shows that Android and iOS controlled 96% of the market. Whether Samsung’s Tizen smartphones have a good market forecast remains to be seen.

On a final note just in case you were wondering how this sales report affects the concerned companies, it would interest you to know that Apple has a market value of over $700b while Samsung is worth about $186b. Google is worth about $382b.