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Samsung consolidates its leadership position ahead of Apple, fourth-placed Lenovo-Motorola sees share fall.
Smartphone shipments worldwide hit a record 1.44 billion units last year, according to new figures published on Thursday, but the major vendors will not be celebrating: figures from late 2015 show that demand is slowing as the market matures.
Handset makers shipped 158.2 million more smartphones in 2015 than they did the previous year, according to data from Strategy Analytics. That equates to a growth rate of 12.3%.
But year-on-year growth in the fourth quarter of the year came in at just 6.4%, with shipments reaching 404.5 million during the three months to the end of December.
"This quarter was the smartphone industry’s slowest growth rate of all time," said Linda Sui, director at Strategy Analytics.
"Smartphone growth is slowing due to increasing penetration maturity in major markets like China and consumer worries about the future of the world economy," she said.
Samsung continues to lead the field, growing shipments by an above-industry-average 9.1% in the fourth quarter to reach 81.3 million units.
The South Korean vendor captured 20.1% of the market in Q4 and 22.2% in the full year.
Meanwhile, second-placed Apple saw its market share fall to 18.5% in the fourth quarter. The pair were neck and neck at 19.6% in Q4 2014.
Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics, believes the rumoured launch of Samsung’s new Galaxy S7 flagship device in the next few weeks will enable it to consolidate its leadership position.
"Apple’s iPhone growth is peaking," Mawston said.
Indeed, the U.S. firm this week reported flat iPhone sales in the latest quarter – the three months to 26 December – and warned that it expects shipments to fall in the current quarter.
"Apple will have to expand into new markets like India or Nigeria if it wants to reignite iPhone growth in 2016," Mawston advised.
Huawei retained third place in the global ranking, taking an 8.1% market share in Q4 and shipping 107.1 million devices in the full year.
Lenovo-Motorola clung onto fourth place, despite declining shipments and market share, and growing competition from Xiaomi in fifth.
"The merger of Lenovo and Motorola has so far not been a success and the two firms’ combined smartphone shipments today are lower than when they first joined together in 2014," Sui said.
