Android Sales Push Global Smartphone Numbers Sky-High

Sales of smartphones have increased nearly 15 percent from last year as demand from emerging markets pushes profits all over the world, new figures have found.

The latest data from Gartner showed that global sales of smartphones to end users totalled 353 million units, a 15.5 percent growth over the same period in 2014.

Growing

Huawei and Apple performed particularly well, the research discovered, with the Chinese manufacturer seeing the highest increase in sales compared to last year’s figures. It grew from a 5.2 percent market share in the third quarter of 2014 to 7.7 percent this year, helped by a range of new product releases such as the Mate S (pictured left).

Pushed on by its latest iPhone 6S and 6S Plus devices, Apple increased its market share from 12.5 percent last year to 13.1 percent, but still trails Samsung, the market leader, which recorded a 23.7 percent share.

Lenovo and Xiaomi rounded out the top five, as growing demand from customers in their Chinese home market helped them build a strong customer base. Unsurprisingly, Android dominated the operating system usage figures, taking 84.7 percent, ahead of iOS on 13.1 percent and Windows on 1.7 percent.

“The availability of affordable smartphones in emerging markets saw consumers upgrade their ‘feature phones’ to smartphones more quickly because of the small price gap,” said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner.

“Smartphone sales in emerging markets rose to 259.7 million in the third quarter of 2015 — an 18.4 percent growth over the third quarter of 2014 — while sales in mature markets saw growth of just 8.2 percent over the same period.”

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