Smartphone Shipments In Third Quarter Hit Near-Record Numbers

In terms of smartphone shipments across the globe, the third quarter of 2015 did really, really well, no doubt helped immensely by the worldwide release of Apple’s newest iPhone models (the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus), and strong sales from Chinese made smartphones, especially those built by Huawei.

Apple had another banner third quarter, managing to ship 48 million units of its iPhone devices around the world. It is pretty remarkable, considering that it is a 22 percent improvement over Apple’s figures during the same period one year ago, and 2014 was a pretty good year even in Apple’s standards. 

As for Huawei, the Chinese phone maker posted a shipment volume of 26.5 million units of its smartphones. That number is equivalent to a 60.9 percent jump from last year’s numbers, as reported by market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC), which just recently published its report on global mobile shipments for the third quarter of 2015.

While Apple’s and Huawei’s numbers are impressive in their own right, the title of the biggest smartphone vendor in the whole world still belongs to Samsung. For the third quarter of the year, the South Korean mobile giant shipped 84.5 million units of its smartphones, still enjoying a comfortable lead over Apple and Huawei, which sit at the number two and number three spots, respectively. What about the rest of the top five? The remaining two spots are taken by Chinese phone makers, namely Lenovo and Xiaomi. 

Despite remaining as the global leader in terms of volume of smartphone shipments, Samsung continues to see its smartphone sales suffer, or at least show no signs of major improvement. The South Korean phone maker did manage to post a 6 percent growth, but that growth rate is still consider below the market average. 

As indicated in IDC’s report, phone makers shipped 355.2 million units during the third quarter of this year. That number is equivalent to a 6.8 percent increase year over year. More importantly, the figure represents a near record, posting the second best ever for a quarter in terms of global smartphone shipments.

That last bit is pretty significant. For years, industry watchers have been warning of smartphone fatigue. Sure, consumers get new smartphone models virtually every year, but every new smartphone introduced in the market does not really offer anything new (except for a few), which may discourage people from updating to a new phone every time. 

But how do you explain the near record figures during the third quarter of this year? The answer, of course, are emerging markets. Smartphone fatigue may be starting to develop in established smartphone markets like the United States and the United Kingdom, but in emerging markets like India, people are just starting to own their first ever smartphones, which means that they still have a long way to go before experiencing any smartphone fatigue.