Apple’s growth rate in the smartphone market slipped to half the industry average, while the industry managed to ship over a quarter of a billion units in the first time in history, according to new figures.
The figures, from Strategy Analytics’ Wireless Smartphone Strategies (WSS) service, show the worldwide smartphone market grew from 172.8 million units during the third quarter of 2012 to 251.4 million units for the same quarter in 2013.
The clear market leader was Samsung, shipping 88.4 million units for the quarter, a massive rise from 56.9 million for the same quarter last year.
It managed to grow its share of the market from 32.9% to 35.2% in the process.
Apple was a distant second, moving 33.8 million units, up from 26.9 million a year earlier as its share of the worldwide market fell from 15.6% to 13.4%.
Huawei (12.7 million units), LG (12 million) and Lenovo (10.8 million) round out the top five manufacturers.
The broad ‘others’ category accounts for 93.7 million units or 37.3% of the market, up from 68 million a year earlier, and includes a range of vendors including Motorola, Nokia, HTC, Blackberry, Xiaomi and Sony.
“While shipments of the flagship Galaxy S4 model softened, solid demand for the new Note 3 phablet and for mass-market devices like the Galaxy Y helped to lift Samsung’s volumes.
“Apple grew just 26% annually during Q3 2013, which is around half the overall smartphone industry average of 45%. Apple’s global smartphone marketshare has dipped noticeably from 16% to 13% during the past year.”
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
