NEW YORK: Worldwide sales of smartphones had a record growth in fourth quarter of 2014 with an increase of 29.9 percent as against the same period last year to reach 367.5 million units, said IT research and advisory company Gartner.
In 2014, sales of smartphones totaled 1.2 billion units, up 28.4 percent from 2013 and represented two-thirds of global mobile phone sales.”The availability of smartphones at lower prices has accelerated the migration of feature phone users to smartphones, pushing the smartphone market to double-digit growth in countries like India, Russia and Mexico,” added Gartner.
Google’s Android operating system saw its market share grow 2.2 per cent in 2014 and 32 per cent year on year. Chinese and other smaller players drove Android’s performance in 2014, while more established players at the higher end of the market continued to struggle to increase stickiness to their brands and ecosystems.
Windows Phone’s performance was flat but it recorded strong results in some markets in Europe, and in the business segment.
“With Apple dominating the premium phone market and the Chinese vendors increasingly offering quality hardware at lower prices, it is through a solid ecosystem of apps, content and services unique to Samsung devices that Samsung can secure more loyalty and longer-term differentiation at the high end of the market,” said Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner.
According to pti Samsung has lost the number one spot to Apple in the global smartphone market in the fourth quarter of 2014. Samsung has been in the top spot since 2011.
Apple reported its best quarter in the fourth quarter of 2014, which saw it sell 74.8 million units and move to the number one position in the global smartphone market. Apple’s large-screen phones continued to see huge demand with sales in China and U.S., growing at 56 per cent and 88 per cent, respectively. Apple’s new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus drove strong replacements within the iOS base.