Smartphone Vendors Shipped A Record 1.43 Billion Units In 2015, Per IDC

According to a preliminary report published by market research firm IDC, mobile manufacturers around the world shipped a whopping 1.43 billion units of smartphones last year. This is a new record for the worldwide smartphone industry, representing an improvement of more than 10 percent compared to the previous record holder, the year 2014. In the final quarter of 2015 alone, the strong demand for smartphones during the holiday season contributed in ballooning the global shipment volume by 5.7 percent to almost 400 million units.

IDC’s preliminary data is interesting, to say the least, especially when you consider all the not too optimistic forecasts given by mobile giants such as Samsung and Apple regarding the overall state of the global smartphone industry. Just this week, Apple released its latest quarterly earnings report, revealing that it posted the slowest growth in iPhone sales ever in the product’s history (the original iPhone was first introduced in the market almost a decade ago in 2007), and even predicts the first ever slump for its flagship device in the next three months.

Samsung also predicted slow sales in the months to come. In its latest quarterly earnings report, the South Korean tech giant posted a 13 percent increase in profit on a 3 percent decrease in revenues. Just like Apple, Samsung believes that throughout the year 2016, it will see only minimal growth in smartphone sales. 

Everybody knows that Samsung and Apple are both the dominant players in the worldwide smartphone industry, easily occupying the number 1 and number 2 positions. But not everybody knows that the third biggest smartphone vendor in the world is Huawei. The Chinese phone maker actually registered the strongest quarterly growth in shipments among the top 5 smartphone vendors in the world, posting a 37 increase in shipments during the final quarter of 2015 while at the same time, becoming the fourth phone maker in history to ship over a hundred million units in a single year. 

According to IDC’s data, Samsung remains the global leader during the most recently ended quarter with 85.6 million units shipped (a 14 percent increase compared to the same period in the previous year), followed by Apple with 74.8 million units shipped (a new quarterly record for the iPhone maker). Huawei, of course, takes the third place, and then followed by fellow Chinese tech giants Lenovo and Xiaomi at fourth place and fifth place, respectively.