According to the market research firm Gartner, the global sales of smartphones increased by 29.9 per cent from 282.8 million units for the quarter ended December 2013 to 367.5 million units for the quarter ended December 2014. Meanwhile, the sales of smartphones increased by 28.4 per cent from 969.7 million in 2013 to 1,244.8 million in 2014.
The worldwide mobile phone sales stood at 1.9 billion units in 2014, experiencing a 3.9 per cent increase from 2013. Although all regions recorded growth in 2014, Japan and Western Europe recorded decline of 2.8 percent and 9.1 percent, respectively.
The report added that Samsung lost its position as the leading vendor in the smartphone market to Apple for October-December 2014. Gartner has suggested that Samsung’s share of profitable premium smartphone users has come under significant pressure as the company lost its share by nearly 10 percentage points to 19.9 per cent at the end of 2014.
The availability of smartphones at lower prices has increased the rate of migration of feature phone users to smartphones, helping the smartphone operating system (OS) market to grow, especially in the emerging countries including India, Russia and Mexico. This upward trend in OS market has continued to benefit Android the most, which experienced a 32 percent year on year increase for the quarter ended December 2014.
