Samsung leads the pack as global smartphone shipments touch 1.4 billion units in 2015

Smartphone shipments touched a record 1.4 billion in 2015 according to figures released by International Data Corporation's (IDC's) Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, with Samsung leading the pack followed by Apple. Chinese smartphone-maker Huwaei made its way to third spot gaining 7.4% of the market share dominated by Apple and Samsung.

The South Korea-headquartered company announced disappointing results on 28 January, with a 40% decline in net profit (year-on-year). However, it managed a 2.1% rise in shipments compared to 2014 at 324.8 million units. Apple on the other hand gained close to 1.5% of market share, very close to what Samsung lost by shipping 231.5 million units registering growth at 20.2% over 2014.

Chinese smartphone makers dominated the remaining three out of the top five slots, with Huawei leading the pack followed by Lenovo (exclusive of Motorola) and Xiaomi. Huawei registered a staggering growth of 44.3% as compared to last year becoming the fourth smartphone-maker to ship over 100 million smartphones in a year – achieved so far only by Nokia, Samsung and Apple.

Lenovo exclusively registered 24.5% growth over last year, but when combined with its recently-acquired Motorola from Google, the entity's year-on-year growth was -21.1%. Xiaomi's shipments were 3.2 million short of from Lenovo's and the budget phone-maker managed to gain close to 5% of the total market share.

The rest of the market was captured by the likes of LG, HTC, Microsoft and others who accounted for 43.6% of the total market share, which shows how competitive the smartphone domain has become, as regional and small players fared well last year.

Top five smartphone vendors, shipments and market share (units in millions)

Source: IDC Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker released on 27 January 2016.