Analysts at Strategy Analytics conducted an analysis of the state of the global smartphone market; in the first quarter of 2021 and concluded that, based on the number of shipments; Samsung is becoming the largest supplier of mobile devices in the world. According to the figures provided by experts, the quarterly performance of the South Korean giant amounted to 77 million smartphones shipped, and it controls almost a quarter of the market – 23% and growth in annual terms was 32%.
Despite successful sales of the iPhone 12, which saw Apple beat everyone else in the fourth quarter of last year; the first quarter of this year was not as successful for the Cupertino-based group. It is in second place with a market share of 17% and 57 million delivered smartphones. Closing the top three is Xiaomi, which has managed to increase the supply of its devices by 80% year on year. Its market share is at about 15% and in quantitative terms, it is 49 million devices.
The smartphone market status in Q1 2021
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The fourth and fifth positions belongs to Oppo and Vivo with 38 million and 37 million smartphones, respectively, which allows them to take 11% of the market share. It is noteworthy that the top growth in the first quarter of this year belongs to Vivo – 85% on an annualized basis and this is the best indicator among all companies.
But Huawei quite predictably turned out to be among the losers and it did not find a place in the top 5 largest smartphone manufacturers, which control 3/4 of the market – 76%. According to experts, Huawei shipments in the first quarter of this year amounted to 20 million units. In total, 340 million smartphones were shipped in the first quarter of 2021. Over the past three months, the Chinese market has been growing very actively; which accounts for 94 million smartphones, which is almost a third of the total world volume of smartphones.
The China smartphone market had a sensational quarter driven by 5G product success across multiple price tiers. China smartphone shipments were up +35% YoY reaching 94 million units in Q1 2021. Globally, the top five vendors combined took a 76% market share in Q1 2021, up from 71% one year ago. Chip shortages and supply side constraints did not have a significant impact in Q1 among the top 5 brands; but was and will be a concern for smaller vendors over the next few quarters in our view.
