Smartphone shipments went up by 3.1% in the second quarter of the year thanks to several new devices announced in Q1 2016 finally hitting most markets around the world.
In all, 342 million smartphones are estimated to have been shipped over the last three months (April to June 2016) according to the most up to date data from the International Data Corporation (IDC). Same time last year, a total of 331 million smartphones were shipped.
The top three smartphone vendors in the world remained unchanged with Apple, Samsung and Huawei continuing to lead the pack. Of the three, however, it is Apple which experienced a drop in smartphone shipments, something echoed by the company in its recent earnings call. According to Apple, it managed to sell just 40.4 million iPhones in the last quarter, a big drop from the 48 million units it managed to sell over a similar period last year.
While Apple’s iPhone sales slumped by 15%, rival Samsung had a good quarter with the Korean company managing to ship 5.5% more smartphones in Q2 2016 than it did same time last year. The company’s 2016 flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge, are said to have been at the forefront of boosting its shipment figures of the quarter to 77 million units up from 73 million last year.
Chinese device maker Huawei’s roll at the top of the smartphone sales charts continued as it registered an 8.4% increase in shipments last quarter. Buoyed by strong sales of its budget Honor devices and the flagship P9 and P9 Plus which became available in a number of markets in Q2, Huawei managed to ship over 32 million smartphones. The company recently reported that, in all, it had managed to ship over 60 million smartphones between January and June 2016.
The big three of the smartphone industry aside, it is Chinese device makers OPPO and Vivo that reaped big in the last quarter. OPPO registered a 137% growth while Vivo’s wide range of sleek devices ensured it stayed put in fifth place thanks to an 80% growth. All this came at a time when the rest of the smartphone makers, experience huge losses.
LG Electronics, for instance, attributed the $132 million loss reported by its mobile division to slow sales of its 2016 flagship smartphone, the G5. LG could only manage to sell 14 million smartphones. While LG was bold enough to break with tradition and introduce a modular concept in the G5, customers did not respond positively and now the company is hoping that another smartphone, the successor to last year’s V10, will help it turn around its fortunes.
