PCR Tech and IT retail, distribution and vendor news
The top five smartphone vendors have all recorded year-on-year growth for the third quarter of 2017. While Samsung captured the largest market share of 22.3 per cent, selling more than 85 million devices, Xiaomi saw the biggest growth. Registering 80 per cent growth, some 26.8 million Xiaomi devices were snapped up during the quarter as Xiaomi captured 7 per cent of the market share, according to Gartner’s latest report.
In total, global sales of smartphones to end users totaled 383 million units in the third quarter of 2017, a 3 percent increase over the same period in 2016. All of the top five smartphone vendors achieved double-digit growth apart from Apple, which achieved a 5.7 per cent increase.
"Despite market weakness in China, sales of smartphones rose in the third quarter of 2017,” said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner. "Emerging Asia/Pacific (15 per cent increase) and North America (11.2 per cent increase) drove the smartphone growth in the quarter. In emerging Asia Pacific, both Samsung and Huawei saw healthy demand as along with Xiaomi and Vivo, which were able to grow their footprint outside their home markets. In North America, Samsung was the driving force in the quarter due to its new flagship products."
He added: "Renewed pushes of the newly designed Galaxy S8, S8+ and Note 8 smartphones have brought back growing demand for Samsung smartphones, which helped it compete against Chinese manufacturers and deliver a solid performance in the quarter. The last time Samsung achieved a double-digit growth was in the fourth quarter of 2015."
