Apple pips Samsung to become global No.1 in Q4

New York, March 3

iPhone maker Apple has dethroned Samsung from the top spot on the global smartphone tally, a position that the Korean electronics giant had held for over three years, research firm Gartner said today. For the entire year, however, Samsung firmly held on to the top slot.

According to Gartner, the US-based firm captured a 20.4% share (74.83 million units shipped) of the global smartphone market, which saw over 367.48 million units being shipped in the October-December 2014 quarter.

Samsung saw its share declining to 19.9% in the last quarter of the year with shipment of 73.03 million smartphones.

“Samsung’s performance in the smartphone market deteriorated further in the fourth quarter of 2014, when it lost nearly 10 percentage points in market share,” Gartner Principal Research Analyst Anshul Gupta said.

Samsung continues to struggle to control its falling smartphone share, which was at its highest in the third quarter of 2013 at 29.5%, he added.

Gartner Research Director Roberta Cozza said while Apple dominated the premium phone market and Chinese vendors are increasingly offering quality hardware at lower prices, Samsung can secure more loyalty and longer-term differentiation at the high end of the market through a solid ecosystem of apps, content and services.

However, Samsung stayed firm as the largest smartphone vendor for 2014, shipping over 307.5 million units. In 2014, total smartphone shipment totalled 1.2 billion units, up 28.4% from 2013. — PTI