Record 1.4 Billion Smartphones Were Shipped In 2015

Last year saw a record year for global smartphone shipments, as a 12 percent growth in numbers saw the total number of devices hit 1.4 billion.

And despite recent troubles, Samsung took top spot, seeing its fastest growth rate for almost two years to ship 319.7 units in 2015, equivalent to 22.2 percent of the total market share

Apple took second place with 231.5m smartphones shipped worldwide to take a 16.1 percent market share, with Huawei (7.4 percent), Lenovo-Motorola (5.1 percent) and Xiaomi (5.0 percent) rounding out the top five.

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However, the figures from Strategy Analytics suggest that overall growth around the world is slowing as a majority of consumers, especially in maturing markets such as China, now own a device and are content to stick with what they have rather than upgrading just yet.

The figures show that global smartphone shipments grew just six percent annually in the last quarter of the year, shipping 404.5m units in Q4 2015, making it the smartphone industry’s slowest growth rate of all time.

This was not helped by slowdowns for both Apple and Samsung, both of which have reported lower than expected returns in recent financial results.

Strategy Analytics believes that Apple’s iPhone growth “is peaking”, saying that the company will have to expand into a major new market like India or Nigeria if it wants to reignite iPhone growth in 2016.

Samsung on the other hand will be hoping that its fortunes can be spurred on by the release of the Galaxy S7 smartphone, set to be revealed next month at Mobile World Congress (MWC), which should help it consolidate its position at the top of the pile.

Increased growth from the three Chinese vendors that completed the top five shipment totals will continue to take market share from the big two, with Huawei selling 100 million smartphones for the first time this year.

What do you remember about the smartphones of 2015? Try our quiz!