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Gartner: iPhone worldwide sales topped Samsung in holiday quarter, but Samsung won the year

iphones

Gartner is out with its latest report tracking smartphone movement during the previous year and more specifically the holiday quarter.

Headlining the report is news that over 1 billion smartphones were sold in 2014, a data point IDC first said was hit in the previous year, adding that two out of three phones sold last year qualified as smartphones.

Gartner’s data shows Apple topped Samsung in worldwide smartphone sales with 74,832,000 units shipped during the holiday quarter, just 1.8 million units more than Samsung, giving Apple 20.4% market share for the quarter, a virtual tie with Samsung’s 19.9%.

Notably, Gartner’s data told a different story during the same quarter in 2013 when Samsung topped Apple’s smartphone sales around the world by more than 30 million units with 29.5 % marketshare for the quarter over Apple’s 17.8%.

Apple’s record 74.4 million iPhone sales during the holiday quarter following the introduction of the larger-screened iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus of course served Apple well. Samsung entered the quarter ahead of rumors of the newly announced Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge flagship smartphones which will start shipping next month.

Coming up behind Apple and Samsung is Lenovo (which includes sales of Motorola-branded phones), Huawei, and Xiaomi with single digit market share. The collective group of others which amount to 42.4% of the holiday quarter sales.

Gartner

When you look at the data for smartphone sales to end users by vendors for the year as a whole, though, Apple falls behind Samsung considerably. Samsung sales caught 24.7 percent of the market over Apple’s 15.4 percent for the year. The difference? Samsung sold 307,597,000 units over Apple’s 191,426,000 units. Compared to marketshare in 2013, Apple actually dropped 0.1% from 15.5%, although Samsung lost 6 percentage points to the runners-up.

Gartner

With Apple out of its S-year cycle for most of 2015 (until this fall) and Samsung competing with its new Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, the race between the two will remain an interesting space to watch.

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Comments

  1. dragonitedd - 9 years ago

    The most competitive guy is called “others” LOL

    • Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 9 years ago

      Yeah, but others doesn’t make any profit. Some of them are actually private label products that someone else designed/built and already released sales figures. It would interesting to see how much of the “OTHERS” haven’t already been reported by the OEM mfg that actually made the product.

      Example. Google doesn’t make their phones/tablets, someone else does. Google’s products have already been reported by the companies that actually do the design and mfg, so that product is a private label product that’s been double reported. People don’t recognize how much of this double reporting is actually done since the market research companies are probably too lazy in researching and reporting this phenomenon. Samsung, LG, ASUS and others make products which get remarked and sold under other companies’ names.

    • Edison Wrzosek - 9 years ago

      What do you expect? That is where they lump all their unaccounted for numbers in order to make the BS they put down look correct. These firms’ numbers are almost completely worthless.

  2. I’d laugh every time I see BS stats like these if they didn’t affect my position in APPL.

    Apple was the significant winner for the year in the only metric that counts, profit.

    There’s absolutely no sense in comparing the whole of Samsung’s low-end products to Apple’s high-end only products. You don’t see too many people claiming Ford “won” because they shipped more cars and pickup trucks than BMW did 7-series, do you?

    In a few years Samsun may still be making phones, but a lot of these other players will have closed up shop – you can’t keep losing money forever.

    • sircheese69 - 9 years ago

      99.9 percent of the worlds population don’t give 2 shits about profit, so that isn’t a metric that matters to them. It only matters to people like you.

      • Jesse Supaman Nichols - 9 years ago

        Your implication being that 99.9 percent of the world actually cares about units sold? The majority of the world doesn’t care about any metric other than which phone they want at any given time.

        However, considering that profitability is the true measure of success and dictates whether a company has a sustaining business model capable of withstanding the test of time… Investors (the people to whom companies are trying to appeal) care more about that metric. It is the way every industry on the planet functions. Only on online tech blogs do immature little fanboys argue over who sold the most phones. =)

      • sircheese69 - 9 years ago

        Blackberry was the top phone company at one time as well, and where are they now? Profits don’t guarantee you are going to stay in business. I don’t care who sells most phones if your little snark is directed at me. I use what I like.

      • Jesse Supaman Nichols - 9 years ago

        I’ll go ahead and pretend that you are being dense on purpose, because that is a ridiculous comparison. RIM’s profitability was never anything even close to what Apple’s is. RIM never posted higher than 20M revenue, even at their peak in 2011. Apple hasn’t posted less than 20M since 2007. Last year they posted 182.8M in revenue… That’s almost twice the amount of revenue that RIM made in the history of their company!

        RIM’s profitability drastically fell for 3 years before they went bankrupt. Apple is still growing. Your feeble and irrelevant comparison only further shows your ignorance on the topic. I’d go ahead and stop now. You don’t know what you’re talking about. =)

      • sircheese69 - 9 years ago

        I’ll go ahead and not really care what you pretend. Doesn’t affect me one bit.

      • Edison Wrzosek - 9 years ago

        I would just ignore the troll and move on Jesse, he’s gotten into with me as well, and his arguments were beyond comprehensible. People like him have a very narrow and limited view of most everything, and we can just be thankful people like him are not involved with companies like Apple, otherwise they’d be in huge trouble.

      • Jesse Supaman Nichols - 9 years ago

        Indeed Edison. Though, it seems he is done anyway. His last response was basically “I don’t care what you say! I will ignore facts and stick to my opinion. I like it much better than reality.” Lol

      • Edison Wrzosek - 9 years ago

        See below, looks like he’s not done being the site tool, sigh…

      • sircheese69 - 9 years ago

        Ignoring facts? You haven’t given ANY facts. As for ignoring reality, that’s cute coming from an Apple defender one of the WORST type of people to ignore facts.

      • Edison Wrzosek - 9 years ago

        Hey numbnuts, learn to read, Jesse did provide facts, you on the other hand have provided your usual ignorance trip-outs.

      • sircheese69 calm down. Jesse and Ed actually make a point, not like you. Who with a right mind would care only about number of units sold rather than profit when that’s one of the key factors that moves a company forward?

      • sircheese69 - 9 years ago

        Of course you think they made a point, it’s not even a question that your mind set is just as pathetic as them.

      • Edison Wrzosek - 9 years ago

        I think someone forgot to take their Ritalin this afternoon…

      • Well, every employee of Apple loves it, because profit is what keeps a business open and running, and an open and running and growing business needs employees. So yeah, I would say you are a moron.

      • sircheese69 - 9 years ago

        Yes, because those people represent 99 percent of the world’s population. Do you idiots even think before you speak?

      • Jesse Supaman Nichols - 9 years ago

        Well, this all escalated rather quickly… Lol. It seems that you, sircheese69, are missing the point. The post that your initial comment responded to was about the superiority of the revenue metric as opposed to the “units-sold” metric. Your response was that 99.9% of the world doesn’t care about profit, so that doesn’t matter. That implies that you believe that units sold is a superior metric by which one can measure the success of a company. If this is not the case, then your initial comment was largely misguided and irrelevant to the original post by Bruno Fernandes.

        You went on to compare Apple to RIM (Blackberry). I pointed out the ludicrous nature of that comparison by presenting you with a series of facts and figures. You essentially said, “I don’t care”. It was then pointed out that you ignored the facts and figures that were presented to you. Then you said no facts were given (ironically proving that you ignored the facts and figures that were presented to you).

        Finally, you began using the classic “iSheep” argument and claimed that we are all blind Apple loyalists who are incapable of thinking for ourselves. Unfortunately (though not surprising), you have made yet another error. I am not an Apple loyalist. I love Apple products. However, I also love Google products. I think the Android OS is fantastic and runs quite well on the proper hardware. I am especially a fan of Google’s Material Design standards and use them on a daily basis as a web designer.

        Finally, it was pointed out that Apple Employees love the profits (seemingly as a light-hearted joke) and you felt the need to attack that individual as well. Perhaps you should consider seeing a therapist. It seems that you either have anger issues or some kind of mental condition (possibly a psychopathic personality disorder or bipolar disorder). I would encourage you to seek help. Peace. =)

    • alvinguzman - 9 years ago

      Agreed…but the whole question is where are they getting these sales numbers. Only Apple provides audited shipments/sales every quarter.

    • sircheese69 - 9 years ago

      Says an actual troll, who none the less, dragged my kids into a previous discussion because you were losing the conversation. But I’m the troll. You are a pathetic piece of shit Ed. Karma is going to bite you one day.

      • Edison Wrzosek - 9 years ago

        I’m the piece of shit for calling you out for being an ignorant dumb troll? How about this then, go fuck yourself asswipe, I’m done wasting my time on your worthless ass, as are many people here, idiot.

      • sircheese69 - 9 years ago

        You keep keep calling me a troll as if your opinion of me means anything. Go fuck myself? How about you actually go get some pussy? Oooh right, you troll people all day for Apple, women don’t find that particularly attractive. Also your face looks like it could use a nice dose of bat. So, how about YOU go fuck YOURSELF and while you’re at it, take some razor blades to your wrists and put everyone out of your misery you pathetic, worthless waste of skin. Let everyone else use that air you breathe because you certainly don’t deserve to breathe it.

      • Edison Wrzosek - 9 years ago

        Saying that you’re a worthless sack of a horse shit would be paying you an unduly deserved compliment… Just for the record, I am happily married, and my sex life is of no concern of anyone’s except my own, but thank you for your concern, means a lot coming from the class dunce.

        Oh, and thank you for the suggestion of the razor blades, I’m certain to take the advice of some lose cannon schlep on the web who doesn’t like being exposed for the moronic idiot he truly is.

        Hopefully, the mod’s here will quickly swoop in and delete your BS, and honestly, won’t mind if they remove my responses to you, as it’ll clean up the discussion tone in here.

      • Does trolling make you feel good sircheese69? Seriously, I have read your comment and you’re a way off dude.

      • sircheese69 - 9 years ago

        Another troll calling me a troll? That’s cute. You read my comment? Congrats? You want a cookie?

      • Edison Wrzosek - 9 years ago

        No, but I’d love to make a giant turd and stick your face into it like a dog that needs to be trained, what a god damned idiot!

      • sircheese69 - 9 years ago

        Holy shit, that’s the best you have? Seriously? You are more pathetic than I previously thought.

      • Seriously, what’s wrong with you? I think that the saying ‘Don’t feed trolls’ is very appropriate here. Have a nice day and grow up.

      • sircheese69 - 9 years ago

        Don’t feed the trolls, right, which is why I am done here.

        I’ll leave with this though, when you bring someone’s kids into a conversation that had nothing to do with them, you’ve lost all credibility and THAT, is a troll. A worthless, pathetic piece of shit troll. Luckily I don’t know Ed in person as he would have been put in the hospital for talking about my kids the way he did a while back.

        Bunch of sad, sad pathetic losers.

      • Edison Wrzosek - 9 years ago

        Goes to show how little I care about you, because I don’t even remember bringing kids into the conversation, and I couldn’t be bothered to go back and look at the logs.

        As for putting me into the hospital, gee, you can give it your best shot asswipe. I never mentioned beating the shit out of you, did I? Hope you never bump into me in public…

  3. You need to compare comparable. For example sales of iPhone 6 vs. Samsung Galaxy S5. You can not compare a few devices vs. thousands of devices.

    • Edison Wrzosek - 9 years ago

      Unfortunately that will likely never be possible, as no other OEM releases even their actual sales data, let alone break it down by model. All they give us is their shipped to channel figures.

      I can only imagine how embarrassing the numbers might be for Samsung if they started to break the numbers down by device type/model, and how many were actually SOLD.

      Wonder what their RMA numbers are as well…

  4. Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 9 years ago

    I would like to see this further broken down in terms of price category. I think that’s what’s important. I would like to see what each quarter does in terms of how many unit sales in each price category because it give us a better picture to look at.

    Apple doesn’t sell smartphones with a MSRP of less than $450, so that market segment Apple doesn’t even compete in, and that’s where the majority of the Samsung, etc. are at, which will explain the revenues and Net Profits for each of these companies.

    Also, Samsung did FINALLY delete a bunch of aging smartphone models from their price list so I think someone woke up at Corporate and realized that those cheaper models don’t bring in much in the way of profits and profits is the name of the game.

  5. Edison Wrzosek - 9 years ago

    Same old BS from the same old sources of FUD (IDC, SA, Gartner). They post these BS numbers, using biased and absurd methods of coming to these numbers, and put them out as gospel, it’s a joke really.

    I trust my own eyes and other metrics, such as web usage by device / OS, purchases made by device / OS, income earned (developers and OEMs), and what I see out in the field every day.

    The iPhone now OWNS the smartphone market in my geographic area; everywhere I look it’s iPhone’s. Move out to the lower-income suburbs with a statistically lower education level, and what do you see? Android becomes visible.

    • The majority of people around the world who have an iPhone will be paying for it monthly on a subsidised contract. How is that classed as an indication of wealth? Answer: It’s not.

      • Edison Wrzosek - 9 years ago

        Says someone calling themselves a troll right in the name, how rich… Most Android devices are given away for $0, or are given away as freebie 2-for-1 specials. Most of the iPhone’s I see, majority 5S and up in my area, are a minimum $100 on subsidy and up, with iPhone 6 / 6+ going into the $450 on subsidy range for the larger storage capacities. Those are NOT cheap phones, unlike their cheap crap Android knock-offs.

        Nice try though.

      • It’s a perfectly valid point I made – and accurate incidentally – and even though I neither criticised Apple, sung the praises of Android or criticised you you STILL felt the need to get personal. And you have the nerve to come across as all holier than thou in your argument with Sircheese69 above?

        That is one hell of an attitude you have there son.

      • Edison Wrzosek - 9 years ago

        The point you made is not valid, nor did you put up anything to try and justify it. At least I put up numbers from carriers about subsidy rates, you gave us zilch.

        And you’re trying to play the innocent card, when you’ve trolled with the best of them here? How funny! And you come to the aid of another fellow troller, romantic…

        My attitude towards trollers is exactly what you’re getting now, and don’t expect any better, as people like you command no respect, nor should they.

      • Your highly intelligent.
        Your never wrong. Ever.
        You believe that what you say is the truth.
        You can’t be reasoned with.
        Your incapable of feeling shame or remorse.

        You my friend are a sociopath pure and simple.

        I haven’t trolled on here – I have given my opinion. Because you believe what you say is the truth then anyone with a different about must be a troll. Classic sociopathic behaviour. Have I EVER came on here and randomly criticised an individual in an offensive way? Nope – not once. You have. Many times.

        You criticise those reports as garbage while claiming that your knowledge “in the field” is more accurate. Classic sociopathic behaviour.

        You respond to my comment as being rubbish, while quoting numbers from your local area – completely forgetting that there is a whole world out there which doesn’t actually revolve around the little area you live in. Classic sociopathic behaviour.

        Get help mate before you turn into another Charles Manson.

      • sircheese69 - 9 years ago

        Aunty, you nailed it. He’s obviously sick and it’s obvious to anyone but him.

      • sircheese69 - 9 years ago

        Aunty, that he thinks we want respect from him is laughable, do you? I sure don’t care if he does or doesn’t. I am sure no one will cry at his funeral.

  6. Gort (@DrugstorCowboy) - 9 years ago

    Ah, yes. The Church of Market Share. Because as we all know, profits don’t matter. Nor does Gartner.

  7. What do people speak about quantity and not sales?
    Quantity x Price should be more important, as this way we are adding Ferraris to Fiats…

  8. Alex Man (@ml_man) - 9 years ago

    How about divide profit against market share and see how that works out!

Author

Avatar for Zac Hall Zac Hall

Zac covers Apple news, hosts the 9to5Mac Happy Hour podcast, and created SpaceExplored.com.