Smartphone shipments in 2016 Q3

 

The news will keep showing you mostly 2 brands: Samsung and Apple, a whole lot more than other brands, but how are they really faring in terms of market share with other brands?

Statista compiled the chart above, splitting smartphone shipments into 3 parts for 2016 Q3 and considering only Apple, Samsung and grouping remaining brands as ‘Others’. From the chart we see that all other smartphone brands combined shipped the most units in millions over the past 5 years, from slightly below a 100m units to 244m units in the 3rd quarter of 2016.

According to IDC, Samsung and Apple saw their smartphone shipments decline by 13.5 and 5.3 percent, respectively, in the most recent quarter, while the remaining market grew by 7.7 percent. As demand for low- to mid-range handsets in emerging markets continues to surge, Chinese vendors, led by Huawei, OPPO and Vivo gradually close the gap on Apple, while also strengthening their presence outside of their home turf. Market leader Samsung still has a significant lead over the competition, but it remains to be seen how significantly the problems surrounding the Galaxy Note 7 will hurt the company in the mid to long term. (Statista)

So no matter how many billboards you see on Great East Road showing off one brand, globally Apple and Samsung are only making up 32.7% of smartphone shipments. If we had to focus on Zambia, a general impression would be that the 4 major brands struggling for market share are Samsung, Apple, Huawei and BlackBerry (which is slowly dying out as support by some app makers for its OS ends). One brand that definitely looks like it could take over the Zambian market is Huawei. Keep an eye out for that.

Let’s get some Zambian numbers real quick, what phone brand are you using?