Samsung’s and Apple’s global smartphone shipment market share will decline to around 25% and 14%, respectively, by 2015 (2013: 31% and 15%), says Fitch Ratings.<\/p>\n
The decline will be due largely to rising competition in emerging markets, where lower-priced handset models from local competitors should continue to gain market share at the expense of the big two.<\/p>\n
In these markets, where cost is relatively more important than global brand strength or cutting-edge technology, competitors’ devices retailing at US$100-300 can offer most of the key features of more expensive phones from Samsung and Apple.<\/p>\n
“We expect the big two’s combined smartphone shipment volume to stagnate at around 450 million-460 million units in 2014 (2013: 467 million), even as the global smartphone market rises by around 20% to 1.2 billion,” said the ratings agency.<\/p>\n
Fitch estimates that smartphones account for roughly two-thirds of the global handset market, and we believe growth will come largely from emerging markets.<\/p>\n
India and China together are expected to account for over 60% of growth in smartphone shipment volumes.<\/p>\n
Local handset makers including China’s Xiaomi<\/a>, Lenovo, Huawei <\/a>and India’s Micromax Informatics are the principal large competitors for Apple and Samsung.<\/p>\n According to data from IDC, global smartphone shipment volumes increased by 5% in 2Q14 to 295 million units (1Q14: 281 million units). In China, Xiaomi took the lead with 15 million devices with a market share of 15% – ahead of Samsung’s 12%, which shipped 13.2 million smartphones.<\/p>\n Concurrently, developed markets’ smartphone profitability should also continue to decline, as market saturation and the lower incremental benefits of new models has lengthened the replacement cycle and slowed growth.<\/p>\n Competition has also intensified as more manufacturers have been able to produce devices which exceed most consumers’ design and technical requirements.<\/p>\n Apple’s next iPhone, rumoured to be launched in September 2014, is likely to have a larger screen, and developments are likely to be incremental rather than revolutionary.<\/p>\n “We believe that the innovations – which include curved screens and compatible wearable devices – are unlikely to change the trend facing Samsung and Apple,” Fitch said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Samsung’s and Apple’s global smartphone shipment market share will decline to around 25% and 14%, respectively, by 2015 (2013: 31% and 15%), says Fitch Ratings. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4261,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,3],"tags":[3364,1976,359,326],"class_list":["post-6023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","category-phones","tag-apple","tag-marketshare","tag-samsung","tag-smartphones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}