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| smartphones outsell feature phones |
Research firm IDC is sharing its most recent smartphone sales data, numbers that show big gains for the top manufacturers from Korea and China, but only a modest jump for Apple. The entire mobile market grew by four percent year over year, says IDC, with companies combining to produce nearly 420 million handsets. Most interestingly, it notes that the past quarter is the first time that smartphones actually outshipped feature phones, garnering 51.6 percent of the market, but knowing how nebulously the industry defines "smartphone," we aren’t putting too much stock in the claim.
According to IDC, Samsung had by far the largest share of smartphone shipments last quarter — a total of 32.7 percent — nearly doubling second-place manufacturer Apple’s share. In comparison, LG, Huawei, and ZTE all shipped roughly the same number of devices — between 10.3 million units (LG) and 9.1 million units (ZTE) over the quarter, with both LG and Huawei growing by roughly 100 percent. In comparison, Samsung moved just over 70.7 million units, and Apple, 37.4 million. Every other manufacturer combined moved a total of 78.8 million smartphones — more than Samsung, which placed first with a 37 percent increase over last year.
Via: The Verge
