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The Samsung Galaxy S6 wasn’t even out until Q2 2015, but Samsung’s first quarter results were good enough to dethrone Apple and reclaim the title of biggest smartphone vendor. On the back of news that Samsung was able to rake in about $5.6 billion in profit for Q1 2015, Strategy Analytics revealed that Samsung commanded 24.1% of global smartphone shipments that quarter, while Apple came in a fair bit down at 17.7%.
To break that down in terms of units, there were 345 million units shipped in total, 83.2 million of which Samsung is responsible for. Apple shipped 61.2 million, while Lenovo-Motorola and Huawei shipped 18.8 million and 17.3 million, respectively. The rest were lumped into the infamous “others” category for a total of 164.5 million.
We’re not sure how Samsung was able to rebound so quickly, though one could point to the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. Sure, they weren’t out, but by this time Samsung’s 2014 handsets were likely put on sale all over the world in anticipation of the new goods.
Samsung’s Q2 should be even better with the company already having shipped a record number of Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge units. It couldn’t have come at a better time with Samsung having suffered a beating on their earnings reports for a few months now, but we’ll have to wait until the full numbers are in to see exactly what sort of impact the launch will have on the company’s outlook for the rest of the year.
[via Samsung]
“We’re not sure how Samsung was able to rebound so quickly”
They didn’t. It’s only that Apple sales are always cyclic. They sell a lot when they introduce a new iPhone and much less during the rest of the year.
The same should hold true for Samsung through, the S6 wasn’t on sale in Q1.
I don’t think it would since they tend to sell the note line in between the S releases. And last years note 4 and note 4 edge were really good.
I wonder how many people jumped off the S series and onto the note line after they say the S6.
I dumped my Note 4, and got the S6.
Depends if pre-sales get counted to the first quarter or not.
Good for them! I miss my Note somewhat (went to Nexus 6).
Glad they took the feedback from the S5 to heart.
I wonder how much Apple’s stubbornness is responsible for Samsung’s success. If Apple had jumped on the “big screen” train early on instead of fighting it for years, would Samsung have grabbed the marketshare they did and become as big as they are (phone-wise)? I don’t think so. Same goes for Android in general. Would Android be as successful had Apple not gone exclusively to AT&T? If they had made the iPhone available on Verizon from the start I would’ve bought one and never picked up the original Droid.
I’ve heard the argument, and popular fallacy that “iPhone is going to destroy Android Phone market share just as soon as [Insert Impending Rumor Here]” too many times to pay it any credence. What has this argument morphed into now “If Apple just made their devices more like Android from the start then they’d be winning in market share”??
If Apple were to release the best Android phone ever imagined they STILL would not own the market share. Why, you ask? Because Apple has always cared more about profit than market share (for good reason), and they would price it for maximum profit based on their brand. We saw this with the PC market already.
At the end of the day, though… who cares aside from shareholders? Use what you like.
I agree to some extent, I don’t think Apple would’ve prevented the eventual growth of Android, but my question still stands. I don’t know if Samsung would be the sales leader in phones if Apple had made a larger screen phone a few years earlier.
Highly unlikely. As Scott said above, Apple purposely prices themselves out of certain markets. A good portion of Android sales comes from low end devices in emerging markets. Samsung makes devices in a much wider array of price points to attract customers Apple has no interest in.
I just want to say that this is easily one of the best comments I’ve read on the subject – spot on in every point.
Actually apple tried to get Verizon to sell the iPhone before they went to AT&T but Verizon declined and AT&T jumped at the chance when apple approached them and the rest is history
That is not true. That is a huge lie that has been debunked. They wanted a GSM only phone, which is what they did for years.
Would you mind sharing the source of this GSM only debunking, this is the first that I’ve heard of it as I really don’t keep up with Apple or their products.
Only Cingular, now AT&T, trusted Apple when they approached them about the iPhone. The others declined. The two companies had a multi-year exclusive agreement. After the agreement expired, the iPhone became available on other U.S. carriers.
Right on. People forget that it was the AT&T / Apple deal that helped give power back to the OEMs. No more bloatware, etc pushed by the carriers. The exclusivity deal was the cost of getting ATandT to allow Apple to keep complete control of their platform and that allowed Android and others to do the same though Android has somewhat less power as carriers are still bending smaller OEMs over who do not have the fan base as Apple and some Android OEMs.
As for the screen size…I think Apple is happy to grow their market share slowly. After all they have been growing sales and profits on a per quarter basis without hiccup since the original iPhone release.
I’m still so disappointed with HTC man… that M9 is just crap.
What about Sony ?
We’ve all always been disappointed with Sony, nothing real new there
What’s the next company you’d look forward to see its new products?
LG more than likely, looks like they produced a pretty decent device out of the LG G4
I meant after that. LG already published the G4…
Compared to what’s out, yes it’s not that great. It’s just a hardware upgrade: future proofing.
Now, what I’m thinking is HTC is still working on something. I hope they are. I’m hoping next year, they just wow the world. I don’t want to keep a phone for 3 years. =.P
Despite the analysis headlines saying that Apple beat Samsung in Q4 2014, the data said that they merely tied them for that quarter.
http://blogs.strategyanalytics.com/WSS/post/2015/04/29/Strategy-Analytics-Samsung-Recaptures-Title-as-Worlds-Largest-Smartphone-Vendor-in-Q1-2015.aspx
Only when speaking of Apple is a tie somehow a major win. Lmao
Remember Samsung doesn’t reveal sales figures so these figures are ONLY estimates. They could be higher or lower and only Samsung knows for sure. So unless Samsung has revealed them to you, how can you make that statement with any certainty? The fact is, we don’t know for sure. The only thing we can be sure of, is the Apple figures because they make them available. No guesses or estimates here!
All I’ve done is quote the normative source that absolutely took Apple’s public claims to heart and used their figures.
But I am absolutely impressed with your faith in your belief system, especially knowing how American corporations report their sales and income. :)
Again…
https://gigaom.com/2013/05/09/what-apple-really-means-when-it-says-it-has-sold-a-product/
According to the charts, Samsung’s sales/shipments declined 31% percent year-over-year. Despite being the top vendor, their revenues and profits fell off a cliff in their latest report. Apple and the Chinese manufacturers that sell cheap Android phones are giving them a beating. iPhone 6/6 Plus sales are strong and demand is even stronger and a new iPhone is about to be revealed in June. Samsung’s mobile business is circling the drain.
No – according to the charts, Samsung sales in Q1 2014 were 89 million units, as opposed to 83.2 million for the same quarter this year.
By any math you choose, that’s not a 31% decline – that’s a 7.2% decline.
This gave them a 24.1% market share compared to a 31.2% market share in the same quarter – but by failing to normalize for actual market growth, you’ve really miscalculated how the numbers work or what they mean, and therefore tried to compare 24% to 31% and get your false 31% difference. Sorry but there it is.
As for the iPhone – um. Ok. Dream on. At 61.2 million units sold this quarter – a full 20 million phones less than Samsung, and over 13 million fewer iPhones sold than in Q4 2014, demand for the iPhone is neither strong nor growing.
I agree that something is circling the drain however. :D
You have to admit though Apple does an amazing job at making a profit and that’s an area Samsung really needs to start to excel in again. Still these figures do seem to be showing improvements at last.
Absolutely agree – and I’d go beyond amazing to astonishing on Apple’s profitability. If you look at their last year’s earnings against ALL hardware units sold, it’s clear that their investments had to have contributed perhaps the lion’s share on income. That means what we all know – they can afford to be conservative in their product decisions, lose sales in the short term, and not worry about having the financial strength to dominate an area on demand.
I just wish that they’d do exactly that, along with Microsoft – step up the innovation game, step away from lifestyle marketing and lawsuits, and give us some real technical competition again.
Competition with better products is way good for us and I think we deserve more of it.
I really love a lot of the changes that have gone into the S6 and S6 Edge – but – I think that they could have worked a little harder to make them more price competitive and more accessible for people still needing more storage.
I think that the 2013 Moto X proved that a balanced design is more important than the specs arms race. On paper, the G4 without 8 cores could be saying the same thing – at a price savings on the processor. (We’ll see when it’s out of course.)
HTC drove others to improve the sound.
The iPhone drove others to improve the cameras.
Microsoft drove others to improve simplicity.
We need healthy companies and healthy competition.
Otherwise, we’re all going to end up as fanboys, defending what they give us.
In my opinion only. :)
Thanks for the heads up. I did make an error. However, year-over-year Samsung saw a decline of roughly 7% in sales. While year-over-year Apple’s sales increased about 30%. Yes, there was a normal decline in sales, revenues and profits the quarter following the busy Christmas shopping season, but this is normal. Nothing out of the ordinary! Apple followed up a record setting Holiday quarter with another record setting first quarter while Samsung’s sales, market share, revenues, profits, reputation, pride, self esteem and some executives fell of the cliff. Again! Sales and demand for iPhone 6/6 Plus remain strong. I believe the Galaxy S6/Edge won’t be enough to reverse their current decline. The Tidy Bowl man awaits!
Then why did Apple sales go down while Samsung sales dramatically increased?
I’m envious of your colorful metaphors but would be far more intrigued if they were rooted in fact. ;) :)
Apple didn’t set a new record-setting first quarter – they dropped like a hot potato.
Apple said so – not me.
“Rooted in fact…” Interesting choice of words when in fact we don’t know how many phones they’ve sold because they don’t report actual sales like Apple does. Only they know the real figures and they are not talking. As for the unusual increase in quarterly sales, I think they dumped a lot of phones into the channel to prop up their sales/shipping estimates for the quarter or, more dastardly, paid off the analyst to prop up the figures. As I wrote in my previous post, it’s the trend for sales to fall off after the holiday season for Apple and a lot of businesses. So it’s important to also look at the year-over-year performance to get a better picture and it’s clear Apple has out done itself while Samsung’s decline continues. Just to be sure, are you intimating that iPhone 6/6 Plus sales and demand is in decline and Samsung Galaxy line is performing better than their iPhone counter parts?
https://gigaom.com/2013/05/09/what-apple-really-means-when-it-says-it-has-sold-a-product/
“Rooted in fact…” Interesting choice of words when in fact we don’t know how many phones they’ve sold because they don’t report actual sales like Apple does. Only they know the real figures and they are not talking. As for the unusual increase in quarterly sales, I think they dumped a lot of phones into the channel to prop up their sales/shipping estimates for the quarter or, more dastardly, paid off the analyst to prop up the figures. As I wrote in my previous post, it’s the trend for sales to fall off after the holiday season for Apple and a lot of businesses. So it’s important to also look at the year-over-year performance to get a better picture and it’s clear Apple has out done itself while Samsung’s decline continues. Just to be sure, are you intimating that iPhone 6/6 Plus sales and demand is in decline and Samsung Galaxy line is performing better than their iPhone counter parts?
Apple only reports units sold in its stores. All carrier and third party sales are SHIPPED.
https://gigaom.com/2013/05/09/what-apple-really-means-when-it-says-it-has-sold-a-product/
Next.