It’s getting harder and harder to find someone who doesn’t own a smartphone. And with the latest numbers from IDC, it’s easy to see why.
IDC estimates that 1.43 billion smartphones were shipped during 2015, up more than 10 percent from 2014, making for another record-setting year in smartphone sales. But the growth isn’t just coming from Samsung and Apple; China’s Huawei and Xiaomi are seeing huge gains as well.
“Usually the conversation in the smartphone market revolves around Samsung and Apple, but Huawei’s strong showing for both the quarter and the year speak to how much it has grown as an international brand,” said Melissa Chau, a senior research manager at IDC, in a statement. “While there is a lot of uncertainty around the economic slowdown in China, Huawei is one of the few brands from China that has successfully diversified worldwide, with almost half of its shipments going outside of China.”
In total, Huawei grew shipments by nearly 45 percent, shipping 106 million devices in 2015. Lenovo, which grew the second fastest* among the top five smartphone manufacturers, only saw 24.5 percent year-over-year growth.
Xiaomi also saw significant growth, shipping nearly 23 percent more devices in 2015 than in the year before. However, the company still relied on China for sales, with 90 percent of shipments remaining within the company’s home country. It has opened up sales in India and Brazil too, but those markets aren’t seeing very much growth yet.
Apple and Samsung are still doing fine. While iPhone sales leveled off last quarter, Apple’s smartphone shipments grew by an estimated 20.2 percent in 2015. And despite Samsung only growing shipments by 2.1 percent over the full year, their fourth quarter shipments were up 14 percent.
*Lenovo didn’t fair quite as well when factoring in its ownership of Motorola, which it acquired in late 2014 and would show a shrinkage of more than 20 percent for the brand combined, but IDC tracks the companies separately for now.
