A new device study by Juniper Research said smartphone shipments reached 338 million units globally for the second quarter of 2015. That is a 16% increase over last year.
In spite of these huge numbers, growth slowed slightly from this time last year. One reason for this could be the increasing gap between the major devicemakers and their midlevel competitors.
In China, the gap between winners and losers grew with Huawei coming out as the overwhelming winner over Xiaomi, its closest competitor. According to the report, the launch of Huawei’s P8 smartphone helped the Chinese device giant grow nearly 50% over last year while Xiaomi grew just 33%.
The report points to Huawei’s expansion into markets beyond Asia as a key factor in providing the catalyst for the huge growth. “Xiaomi is not, leaving it vulnerable to the slowing of the Chinese market,” Juniper’s Smartphone Quarterly Report said.
Samsung also saw a much needed turnaround thanks to the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. But issues shipping the devices led to stagnant shipment volumes, according to the report. Expected shipments of 60 million and 70 million devices by the end of 2015, was blunted by reports of delays in components.
“As a result, the company has not been able to ship the volumes it anticipated and will be ‘adjusting the price’ of the devices to boost sales ahead of new high-end model launches expected in Q3,” the report found.
Another key finding of the was that in spite of the slowed growth of the industry, Apple continues to break records with 47.5 million unit sales, which Juniper attributes to the iPhone maufacturer’s growth in China. They reported that year-over-year revenue for the region increased 112% to over $13 billion.
Other devicemakers had mixed results. LG declined 3% over last year with 14.1 million shipments. Microsoft saw a steady increase of 12%, shipping 8.4 million devices in the lead up to the Windows 10 phones, and Blackberry continued its decline with just above 1 million shipments as it cut its offerings from four phones a year to one or two.
