Samsung is licking its wounds today after IDC estimated that it saw a very rare year-on-year drop in smartphone market share during the second quarter of 2014, which will concern a company that is historically used to its percentages going in the opposite direction.
Samsung had previously already warned that it’s smartphone sales were not brilliant which now appears to have been an attempt at readying its shareholders for the bad news – news that it isn’t used to having to deliver.
Particularly worrying for Samsung still be the fact that it was expected to post wholly different results in the light of the Galaxy S5 launch, with that line of smartphones usually selling like the proverbial hotcakes. With that having apparently not done quite as well as was previously hoped, Samsung will now be left to pin its hopes on the next Galaxy Note and a raft of low-cost devices. Unfortunately, neither have those managed to match the flagship Galaxy S for numbers in the past.
In fact, it’s those cheap phones that are being blamed for Samsung’s decline in market share from 32% to 25%, with the likes of Lenovo and Huawei taking that lower end of the market by storm and increasing their own market share to boot. Samsung will hope to arrest that trend as the months tick by.
As for Apple, it too saw a drop in market share like most, though IDC does note that it believes the Cupertino outfit did shift more handsets than last year. It was reasonable to expect Apple to post relatively average numbers this quarter though, with the iPhone 6 very much on the minds of not only the company but those shopping for a new Apple smartphone also.
These numbers obviously aren’t the be-all and end-all for any of the companies involved, but those with poor results won’t want to make a habit of it just as those showing growth will be hoping for that upward trend to continue.
Though Samsung has seen a sharp dip in sales, it would be interesting to note how the company will counter the problem. Will it launch even cheaper flagship handsets? Or just take its marketing might to the limit.
Guess we’ll leave this out here till we see something on our own.
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