The market research firm Gartner said on Thursday, 30 November, that the South Korean multinational Samsung has pipped American tech giant Apple to achieve the top spot in the list of global smartphone sales to end users in the third quarter of 2017.
According to the market share reports Samsung registered 20.7 percent market share and Apple managed to get 13.7 percent in the second quarter, which indicated a huge drop for the Cupertino-based company.
On the other hand, Apple received 11.9 percent of the shares, Huawei grabbed the third spot with 9.5 percent as the global smartphone sales have reached 383 million units in the third quarter. However, Samsung's smartphone sales recorded increase to 19.3 percent in this quarter.
"Renewed pushes of the newly designed Galaxy S8, S8+ and Note 8 smartphones have brought back growing demand for Samsung smartphones which helped it compete against Chinese manufacturers and deliver a solid performance in the quarter," said Anshul Gupta, Research Director of Gartner in a statement.
"The last time Samsung achieved a double-digit growth was in the fourth quarter of 2015," Gupta added.
Apart from Huawei, there are other smartphone vendors who grabbed double-digit growth. These are OPPO and Xiaomi. Among these two Xiaomi achieved the strongest growth, as the Beijing based company has achieved 80 percent increase in the third quarter of 2017.
Although Samsung became the show stealer, Apple saw strong sales in many of the emerging markets, including India. This is due to its continued sales of legacy iPhones, including the iPhone 5S which retails at around $240 in most markets.
India continues to be the biggest growth market for Xiaomi outside China. On the other hand, the growing sales in Latin America and Russia are also boosting its sales.
"In emerging Asia Pacific region, both Samsung and Huawei saw healthy demand along with Xiaomi and Vivo which were able to grow their footprint outside their home markets," Gupta noted.
Leading Chinese smartphone manufacturers OPPO, Huawei, Vivo and Xiaomi continued to drive sales across emerging markets, led by their mid-price and budget smartphones with a focus on 4G connectivity and better cameras.
With inputs from IANS
