330 million smartphones sold worldwide in Q2 2015, most of them Apple and Android

According to the latest report by research firm Gartner, approximately 330 million smartphones were sold worldwide in Q2 2015, an increase over 13.5 per cent from the 290 million sold a year ago.

The vast majority of devices sold in the quarter ran Android. Over 82 per cent of smartphones sold last quarter ran Android, a slight drop from a year ago. And while Android’s total numbers grew, from 243 million to 271 million, it was the operating system’s slowest quarter-over-quarter growth to date.

“While demand for lower-cost 3G and 4G smartphones continued to drive growth in emerging markets, overall smartphone sales remained mixed region by region in the second quarter of 2015,” said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner.

Emerging Asia/Pacific (excluding China), Eastern Europe and Middle East and Africa were the fastest-growing regions, driven by good performance from Chinese and local vendors. By contrast, smartphone sales in China fell for the first time year over year, recording a 4 percent decline.

“China is the biggest country for smartphone sales, representing 30 percent of total sales of smartphones in the second quarter of 2015. Its poor performance negatively affected the performance of the mobile phone market in the second quarter,”

“China has reached saturation — its phone market is essentially driven by replacement, with fewer first-time buyers. Beyond the lower-end phone segment, the appeal of premium smartphones will be key for vendors to attract upgrades and to maintain or grow their market share in China.”

Despite the launch of new S6 models, Samsung’s premium phones continued to be challenged by Apple’s large-screen iPhones. Samsung lost 4.3 percentage points in market share and declined 5.3 percent in unit sales in the second quarter of 2015. Huawei recorded the highest sales growth rate of 46.3 percent, thanks to strong overseas sales and 4G smartphone sales in China. iPhone sales increased 36 percent, which helped Apple gain 2.4 percentage points in market share. Apple recorded strong iPhone replacements in both emerging and mature markets — and particularly in China. Total iPhone sales in China grew 68 percent to 11.9 million units.

BlackBerry continued its slide from 0.7 per cent market share a year ago to only 0.3 per cent market share, representing a mere 1.1 million smartphones.

Windows-based devices grew slightly in total volume to 8.2 million, but dropped in market share to 2.5 per cent from 2.8 per cent a year earlier.

Apple’s double-digit growth in the high-end segment continued to negatively impact its rivals’ premium phone sales and profit margins. Many vendors had to realign their portfolios to remain competitive in the midrange and low-end smartphone segments. This realignment resulted in price wars and discounting to clear up inventory for new devices planned for the second half of 2015.

In the smartphone operating system (OS) market (see Table 2), Android’s global share was affected by the weak performance of China in the second quarter of 2015 and the strong performance in China of Apple, which has taken share from Android for the last three quarters.

“Android saw its lowest year-over-year growth of 11 percent with share reaching 82.2 percent in the second quarter of 2015,” said Mr. Gupta.

Microsoft continued to struggle to generate wider demand for Windows Phone devices — even at the lower end. “In light of Microsoft’s recent cuts in its mobile hardware business, we’ll await signs of its long-term commitment in the smartphone market.”

“The low barrier to entry into the Android segment will continue to encourage an array of new players, adding to further disruptions coming from Chinese manufacturing and innovative Internet players with new business models that are not reliant on hardware margins,”

Worldwide mobile phone sales to end users totaled 446 million units during the second quarter of 2015. The performance was flat (0.4 per cent) year over year (see Table 3). Vendors that are focused on the emerging markets, such as Huawei, ZTE, TCL Communication and Micromax, benefited from high demand in these markets, while global vendors such as Sony, Samsung and HTC struggled to achieve growth at the high end of the market.

Additional information is available in the Gartner report “Market Share: Final PCs, Ultramobiles and Mobile Phones, All Countries, 2Q15 Update.”