Roger Fingas
During the March quarter Apple's iPhone remained firmly in second place in global smartphone marketshare, but saw a significant drop year-over-year to 15.3 percent, ceding some ground to up-and-coming Chinese vendors.
Apple slipped from 18.3 percent in the March 2015 quarter, IDC said in a research report published on Wednesday. On Tuesday, Apple reported iPhone shipments dropping by nearly 10 million units, marking the first ever year-over-year decline in that segment.
Leading the pack in the global market was Samsung, which dipped from 82.4 million units to 81.9 million, lowering its marketshare just a tenth of a point to 24.5 percent.
China's Huawei, however, jumped from a 5.2 percent marketshare to 8.2 percent, shipping 27.5 million phones. Similar gains were seen at two of the company's local rivals, Oppo and Vivo, with the former growing from a 2.2 percent share to 5.5 percent. Vivo advanced from 1.9 percent to 4.3 percent, despite having little presence outside of China.
IDC speculated that Apple's shipments may have been impacted by iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners having little interest in 6s models. While the 6s has improvements like a faster processor, a better camera, and 3D Touch, these are incremental upgrades, which may be prompting people to wait for an "iPhone 7" expected to ship later this year.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
33 Comments
Apples to Oranges yet again. Take out the low end junk from Samsung and their numbers fall to 20 million (or less).
Look at the penetration of garbage phones: Huawei and Oppo, pure Chinese copycats. These phones probably make close to zero profits.
The S versions usually have a tougher sell due to the lack of external redesign.
Although I think that part of the issue this year was that the biggest selling feature was 3D Touch which as of yet has proven a bit of a lame duck.
It's a fantastic phone, I own one. But I can see how strong releases from competitors have been able to put a dent in their lead this year.
I'm a longtime apple user and fan but it's justified. You can't sell at premium prices when the competition is ahead of you. See the Galaxy s7, I hate how they copy apple and I don't like Samsung logo, but it's ahead of iPhone, period. Sometimes I wonder what apple is doing because competition is on par or ahead of them (Apple TV (no Dutch Siri or voice active here), Mac Pro (they will lose video market too if they don't have a compelling update soon, but I know video editors who've already given up on Apple)). I'm willing to pay a little bit more for an apple and was waiting for Apple to introduce an iMac with the latest i7 and screen update. I got disappointed and angry when they did. Soldered ram, a hard drive from the nineties and above premium price. Forgive my bad English but when you don't stay ahead of the competition it's not justified to ask premium prices. That's how the market works and you'll see in product market share. And no, I'm not a troll. Just a disappointment Apple user. I hope Apple will do better. It's like a dejavu for me. I was disappointed in the late nineties too when Steve said PowerPC was the future and my friends with Intel pcs were much faster with their wintel in Photoshop than my 3x expensive G4 power Mac.
Come on Apple, your products are not that diverse as Samsung or other brands. Concentrate and make the best again. Listen to your loyal user base and bring more ports to your MacBooks. Aesthetics are important but so does workability. How ugly is a MacBook with adaptors.
I hope WWDC will bring some innovation again and the iPhone 7 mind blowing. Cheers.