
New smartphone launches and increasing focus on emerging markets have fuelled the global smartphone shipments to more than 300 million units for the second consecutive quarter, surpassing 327.6 million during Q3.
Market watcher IDC noted that it was a 25.2% rise in smartphone shipments compared to 261.7 million units shipped during corresponding quarter last year and 8.7% successive growth above the 301.3 million units during 2Q14.
The firm’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker program director Ryan Reith said: "Despite rumors of a slowing market, smartphone shipments continue to see record-setting volumes.
"We’ve finally reached a point where most developed markets are experiencing single-digit growth while emerging markets are still growing at more than 30% collectively.
"In these markets, smartphone price points are making mobile computing possible where we once expected feature phones to remain dominant.
"This is great news for overall volumes, but the challenge has now become how to make money on devices that are quickly becoming commodity products. Outside of Apple, many are struggling to do this."
The rise was mainly fuelled by mutual effort of the vendors following Samsung and Apple, including Xiaomi, Lenovo, and LG Electronics, which posted record growth with different strategies.
IDC’s Mobile Phone team research manager Ramon Llamas said: "The next three vendors – Xiaomi, Lenovo, and LG Electronics – all posted market-beating growth and with markedly different strategies.
"This shows that there is still room to compete in this market, whether it be in the low end as Lenovo has done, at the high end where Xiaomi competes, or in both as LG Electronics has shown.
"Beyond the top five, there are a number of other vendors achieving similar results."
Samsung topped the vendor list with 23.8% market share, followed by Apple (12%), Xiaomi (17.3%), Lenovo (16.9%), and LG (16.8%).