Apple has apparently outperformed Samsung in smartphone sales in the fourth quarter of 2014, becoming the world's top smartphone manufacturer.
Samsung has long been the leader in smartphone sales worldwide, but it has now been dethroned by its archrival - Apple. The iPhone maker ended the year with a splash, seeing impressive smartphone sales that outperformed Samsung.
According to a new report from Gartner Research, Apple is now the world's top smartphone manufacturer, albeit it doesn't have a big edge over Samsung. More specifically, Apple reportedly sold 74.8 million handsets during the fourth quarter of 2014, while Samsung sold 73 million units. Motorola, now owned by Lenovo, was a distant third.
During the whole year of 2014, however, Samsung outsold Apple by a big margin, selling 307.6 million handsets compared to Apple's 191 million units. Smartphone sales in general have also taken off, accounting for the most sales on the mobile market. According to the report, worldwide smartphone sales topped 1.2 billion units, up 28.4 percent from 2013, making up two thirds of all mobile sales.
"Worldwide sales of smartphones to end users had a record fourth quarter of 2014 with an increase of 29.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2013 to reach 367.5 million units, according to Gartner, Inc. Samsung lost the No. 1 spot to Apple in the global smartphone market in the fourth quarter of 2014," Gartner reports.
"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," said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Samsung continues to struggle to control its falling smartphone share, which was at its highest in the third quarter of 2013. This downward trend shows that Samsung's share of profitable premium smartphone users has come under significant pressure."
Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner, further adds that Samsung can bolster its position and consumer loyalty by focusing on a solid app ecosystem, content, and services that are exclusively available on its devices.
Samsung, for its part, acknowledged last year that it was facing notable declines in profits and a sluggish demand for its latest Galaxy S smartphones. The 2014 flagship Galaxy S5, for instance, did not sell nearly as well as its predecessors. In such a context, the success of the new-generation Galaxy S6 flagship is paramount.
Samsung took the wraps off its latest Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2015, but has yet to offer exact pricing and availability details. The company also unveiled a new mobile payments system called Samsung Pay, which will go head to head with Apple Pay.
