IC Insights, a semiconductor market research company based in the US, published a report of 2016’s top smartphones shipments. According to the source, China’s smartphone companies have been a dominating force in the market, holding a total of 11 places out of the 14.

Among the Chinese manufacturers include, Huawei ranked 3rd, OPPO 4th, Vivo 5th, with ZTE holding 6th. In addition to this Lenovo, Xiaomi, TCL, Gionee, Meizu and LeEco/Coolpad came accordingly in order.

Last year’s report for Xiaomi’s shipments saw a decrease to 52.9 million units, down since 2015 by 25%. However, this year speculation believes that Xiaomi has recoiled back significantly.

According to the industry analyst, Kevin Wang, in Q2 2017, Xiaomi sales have reached 23 million, predicting 3Q17 will have another 28 million, and closing 2017 the expected figure will be expected to exceed 80 million shipped units.

What is also interesting to see is the rapid increase in popularity for companies OPPO and Vivo, seeing massive increases of 88% and 89%, respectively. The next largest increase has been Gionee by 53%.

OPPO and Vivo, both owned by BBK Electronics, have seen this large influx of shipments has been primarily due to home market interest in the photography/selfie smartphones. Phones such as Oppo’s R-series and Vivo’s V/Y-series are expected to be the key drivers to the rapid shipment increase between 2015 and 2016. This hasn’t been limited to the home market however, international shipments to countries such as India, Indonesia and in Oppo’s circumstance, with Australia and selected parts of Europe have also played important roles in boosting the company’s shipments.

Other Chinese manufacturers such as ZTE and Meizu have seen small but healthy increases to their shipments, however, it is uncertain what 2017 will bring, depending on what compelling devices they plan to release before the turn to 2018.

Whilst some Chinese manufacturers have seen positive outcomes after 2016’s report, companies such as Lenovo and especially LeEco’s side have felt the pinch in the fall in consumer demand for their phones. The backslash to LeEco’s business plan into the US has now left them tumbling on the leaderboard and unless the company’s negative shipments growth change or they improve their market approach, it is uncertain whether they’ll be appearing in next year’s report.

Lenovo felt similar effects especially in international shipments, where the company had dissolved the ZUK spinoff.

Have IC Insights’ Report surprised anyone? What are your thoughts on the top 14 companies? Were there any missing companies you’d expect on the leaderboard?

(Source)

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Samsung‘s release of the Galaxy S8 and S8+ is turning out to be a good decision for the company and a not so good one for its rivals. The Galaxy S8 comes with a design that can best be described as spot-on, coupled with the presence of a powerful octa-core Snapdragon 835 chip. The device is proving to be a worthy replacement for the ill-fated Galaxy Note 7 which almost threw the company into turmoil last year.

At the last count, Samsung was said to have sold over 5 million units of the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus in less than a month. According to a research by Strategy Analytics, the Korean company is also shown to have dominated the global smartphone market with a total shipment of 80 million units. This gives Samsung a 22.7% share of the market while rival tech company, Apple controls 14.4% share of the market for Q1, 2017. This is closely followed by Huawei, OPPO and Vivo completing the top 5 leaders in phone shipment for the first quarter of 2017.

However, there are indications that Samsung’s lead at the top won’t be under threat anytime soon. First, Apple who is Samsung’s number one rival reported to have postponed the launch of its next-generation iPhone 8 which was expected in September. Also, Huawei is having an issue with spare parts supply. Huawei was recently enmeshed in a scandal where it was discovered that the company used eMMC storage on some models of the P10 instead of the faster UFS 2.1 flash memory the device is listed to come with. The company later released several statements, all stating that the eMMC 5.0 storage was used as a result of a shortage in supply of the UFS 2.1 versions.

Read Also: Huawei Announces May 23 as Launch Date for New MateBook

South Korean analyst Kim Jang-yul, projects that the Galaxy S8 will continue to perform well since Apple has shifted the launch of the iPhone 8. The analyst further disclosed that Huawei is having a supply shortage of its high-end semi-conductor chip and this will limit its shipment. Also, the analyst thinks  OPPO and Vivo are showing signs of a slower growth compared to last year. Thus, the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus’ soaring sales figures may likely continue for the next couple of months.

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A recent statistical data of global smartphone shipments for last year has shown that Apple did beat Samsung to emerge as the top brand last year. If you are a fan of Apple, don’t start jubilating just yet. Apple only edged out Samsung in the fourth quarter of 2016, recording a total of 78.3 million iPhone sales as against 77.5 million recorded by Samsung during the same period.

The huge sales figure gave Apple control over an estimated 17.8% of the entire smartphone market in Q4 2016, while Samsung came in second with 17.7% share. However, in the analysis of smartphone shipments for the entire year, Samsung maintained its strong grip of the market leadership, coasting home with 309.4 million shipments in 2016, giving it a 20.8% control of the entire market. Apple still retained her second position despite losing out its leadership of the Chinese market, with an estimated total shipment of 215.4 million units, representing 14.5% of the entire market share.

Despite the huge figures, the duo of Samsung and Apple saw a slight decline in the number of shipments made in 2016, when compared to the figure achieved in 2015. Samsung shipped 10.3 million fewer handsets last year, while Apple delivered 16.1 million fewer phones when compared to 2015. Both tech giants did lose some of their market shares to Huawei and emerging brands like OPPO and Vivo, which also made the list of the top five global smartphone company last year in terms of shipments. Huawei occupied the third position with a 9.3% share. BBK subsidiaries, OPPO and Vivo finished fourth and fifth with 5.7% and 4.8% of the market, respectively.

Read Also: OLED Display on iPhone X May Reduce Apple’s Profits for Q2 2017

In general, global smartphone shipments rose by 3% to reach 1.5 billion units during the 12 months of the year. According to Strategy Analytics, strong demand for smartphones in China and Africa provided the platform for the increased shipping figures for the industry.
(source)

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