Samsung’s once dominant position in the global smartphone market has come under pressure. At the high-end the company is feeling the pinch from Apple’s iPhone, which managed to match Samsung’s smartphone shipments in the previous quarter, while at the low-end the company feels pressure from local manufacturers hawking cheap devices particularly in emerging markets. Take IDC’s research report on the Chinese smartphone market which says that Samsung has lost its top spot to local manufacturer Xiaomi.
As many of you might already know Xiaomi is an insanely popular smartphone vendor that’s based in China. It has only been around for a few years yet the company has established itself as a major player in the Chinese market. Now it is expanding to other countries as well.
IDC’s report shows that Xiaomi achieved a 12.5 percent market share in Q4 2014 smartphone shipments in China, that’s a good year over year increase, considering that its market share stood at just 5.3 percent in 2013.
Samsung lost a considerable amount of market share as it came down from 18.7 percent in 2013 to just 12.1 percent in Q4 2014.
In Q3 2014 Xiaomi had already been crowned the third largest smartphone vendor in the entire world and back in August 2014 a report by Canalys said that Xiaomi had already became the largest vendor catering to the Chinese market.
Samsung has to make considerable efforts on its part to regain the lost position. The company pegs its hopes on the Samsung Galaxy S6 at the high-end coupled with some new devices for emerging markets that are meant to compete with local rivals.