Smartphone shipments are an interesting trend to take note of across the world.
Data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) reveals that smartphone shipments declined in Q3 2021, following a positive growth rate in the first two quarters.
Accordingly, the quarter saw 331.2 million shipped units, making it a 6.7% year over year.
According to IDC, although almost all regions were marked by a drop in shipments during 3Q21, the severity of the impact varied between regions.
Specifically, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan and China) (APeJC) suffered the largest drops at -23.2% and -11.6% year over year.
Nevertheless, in regions like the U.S., Western Europe, and China, the declines were much less pronounced at -0.2%, -4.6%, and -4.4% year over year, respectively, as these regions are often first in the list in terms of vendor preference.
“The supply chain and component shortage issues have finally caught up to the smartphone market, which until now seemed almost immune to this issue despite its adverse impact on many other adjacent industries,” said Nabila Popal, research director with IDC’s Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers.
So, how did individual smartphone companies perform? Well, Samsung took the lead by shipping 69.0 million units, which translated to 20.8% market share. This was a year-over-year decline of 14.2% largely due to supply constraints.
Apple picked the second position with 50.4 million in shipped units, constituting a 15.2% market share.
The rest of the vendors performed as follows:
| Company | 3Q21 shipments | Market share (%) |
| Samsung | 69.0 | 20.8 |
| Apple | 50.4 | 15.2 |
| Xiaomi | 44.3 | 13.4 |
| vivo | 33.3 | 10.1 |
| OPPO | 33.0 | 10.0 |
| Others | 101.1 | 30.5 |
| Total | 331.2 | 100 |
Finally, it should be noted that Chinese brands have dominated the top positions. Xiaomi is now China’s most popular brand, but it has been so for a while. OPPO and vivo are woned by the same company, BBK Electronics.
