When it comes to smartphone shipments, we guess we can’t blame you if you thought that companies such as Apple and Samsung would be taking the largest slices of the pie. After all both brands are extremely well known and extremely popular amongst smartphone users, but it seems that they are slowly being displaced by the likes of companies out of China, such as Huawei and Lenovo.
This is according to the recent figures released by the IDC (via 9to5Mac) which shows that while Apple and Samsung continue to maintain the lion’s share in smartphone shipments, they are slowly starting to lose ground to said companies.
According to the IDC, back in 2013 in the same period, Samsung and Apple command a market share of 32.3% and 13% respectively. However fast forward to 2014, the market share of both companies has taken a dip and are at 25.2% and 11.9% respectively. This is compared to the likes of Huawei and Lenovo who grew from 4.3% and 4.7% respectively to 6.9% and 5.4%. LG, on the other hand, actually saw a slight drop from 5% in 2013 to 4.9% in 2014.
Given that Huawei has been known to churn out affordable handsets and with Lenovo’s plan to flood the market with as many as 60 smartphones this year, we can’t say that we’re too surprised. Other Chinese companies such as Xiaomi have also expressed their interest to expand to more countries as well as enter the North American market, so safe to say that Samsung and Apple will be in for some stiff competition.