Gartner: Samsung retains smartphone leadership in 2015 with over 20% market share

Samsung was the top smartphone vendor for both Q4 2015 as well as the complete year, according to a latest report by market research firm Gartner. Specifically, the South Korean company sold over 83.4 million units last quarter, claiming 20.7% share of the market, which is up from 19.9% share reported in Q4, 2014.

Apple came in second with 17.7% market share, down from 20.4% share the Cupertino-based company claimed in the year-ago quarter. Huawei, Lenovo, and Xiaomi rounded up the top five with 8%, 5%, and 4.5% shares, respectively. Notably, Huawei achieved the best growth with a 53% jump in sales.

Overall, global smartphone sales saw an year-on-year jump of 9.7% last quarter, which the report said was the slowest growth rate since 2008.

For the complete year too, as already mentioned, Samsung retained the top spot - its market share stood at 22.5%, although that was down from the 24.7% share it had in 2014. Apple's share slightly increased and stood at 15.9%, giving the company the second spot.

Here also, Huawei was the best performer in terms of sales jump.

Talking about the smartphone operating system (OS) market, Android retained the No.1 position in Q4 with over 80% share, which is a jump of over 4% compared to the year ago quarter. Apple iOS' share fell from 20.4% to 17.7%.

The data shows that Windows Phone sales dropped to 4.3 million units last quarter from 10.4 million in Q4 2014, giving the OS just 1.1% market share. This is broadly in line with what we already know.

Finally, struggling BlackBerry's share of the market slid even closer to zero.

Source