IDC: 355.2 Million Smartphones Shipped in Q3 2015
International Data Corp (IDC) reported that smartphone vendors shipped 355.2 million units worldwide during the third quarter of 2015, which represented a 6.8 percent year-over-year increase.
The market intelligence firm also noted that the number of smartphones shipped was the second-highest total on record.
However, IDC pointed out that smartphone shipments in the third quarter fell below its previous forecast of 363.8 million units during the time frame.
“The third quarter placed a substantial emphasis on flagship devices as vendors tried to outclass each other in both features and design,” Anthony Scarsella, IDC’s research manager for mobile phones, said in a prepared statement. “New flagship models translated to fiercer competition at the high-end for most players as many will try to challenge both Samsung and Apple for a place among the elite.”
In addition, IDC recently highlighted each of the top five smartphone vendors’ achievements in the third quarter:
- Samsung — With 84.5 million smartphones shipped, Samsung remained the overall leader in the worldwide smartphone market.
- Apple — Apple released new iPhones that helped it record 48 million units shipped, which represented a 22.2 percent year-over-year increase.
- Huawei — Huawei shipped 26.5 million smartphones, which represented a 60.9 percent year-over-year increase.
- Lenovo — Lenovo shipped 18.8 million smartphones, which represented an 11.1 percent year-over-year increase.
- Xiaomi — Xiaomi shipped 18.3 million smartphones, bringing its 2015 total to 52.1 million.
Expect the number of smartphone users to increase over the next few years as well.
A June 2015 Ericsson (ERIC) report revealed that the number of smartphone subscriptions could reach 6.1 billion, or 70 percent of the global population, by 2020.
The report also showed that mobile video traffic could grow at a rate of 55 percent per year until 2020 and constitute around 60 percent of all mobile data traffic by the end of that period.
What are your thoughts on the global smartphone market? Share your thoughts about this story in the Comments section below, via Twitter @dkobialka or email me at dan.kobialka@penton.com.
