Apple takes the crown from Samsung in smartphone sales

| Technology

Apple takes the crown from Samsung in smartphone sales

The release of the new Galaxy S6 (which will be released within the next month or two) probably can’t come soon enough for Samsung as they are no longer leaders in smartphone sales war.

The long-time leader Samsung has lost the top spot to Apple according to the latest Gartner Research reports.  

Although Apple only marginally beat Samsung in the last quarter of 2014, this is the first time since 2011 that Apple has managed to do so, since then Samsung has dominated due to its Galaxy S range.

Last quarter, Apple sold 74.83 million smartphones, compared to Samsung having sold 73 million, with Lenovo coming in a distant third with 24.3 million devices sold.

This is a huge increase in sales from last year for Apple, who only sold 50.2 million units, while Samsung share of the market dropped by almost 10% and sales dropped by over 10 million devices.

However, throughout the year Samsung still managed to outsell Apple devices by a huge amount. Samsung sold 307.6 million units to Apples 191 million. This is largely due to the amount of devices Samsung has on the market compared to Apple.

The intensified competition Apple is putting on Samsung is obviously due to the launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in September last year. The Samsung Galaxy S5 also struggled compared to earlier models, resulting in a decrease in yearly sales.

"Samsung continues to struggle to control its falling smartphone share, which was at its highest in the third quarter of 2013" said Gartner analyst Anshul Gupta.

But this could all change within the next few months after the unveiling of the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, along with the Samsung Pay (a mobile payment system to rival Apple Pay) on Monday. It will be interesting to see what sort of impact these new devices will have and if it will help to increase their sales as well as their share of the smartphone market. 

Luke Stanley