Global smartphone shipments to end users increased 6.7% year over year to 366.2 million units in the second quarter of 2017, according to Gartner’s latest analysis.
Samsung remained the largest vendor, with market share essentially unchanged from Q2 2016 to Q2 2017: 22.5% versus 22.4%. The South Korean company shipped 82.5 million units in the quarter, followed by Apple with 44.3 million units (12.1% share) and Huawei with 35.9 million units (9.8% share).
Overall market shares showed only modest shifts year on year. Apple’s share fell from 12.9% to 12.1%, while Oppo and Vivo moved into fourth and fifth place and increased their shares by 1.8 and 2.5 percentage points, respectively.
Regionally, Greater China and emerging Asia/Pacific markets were the strongest contributors to sales. Greater China again exceeded 100 million units (101.5 million), while emerging Asia/Pacific accounted for 78.2 million units. By comparison, Greater China held 33.3% of the market in Q2 2016 with 114.2 million units sold. More mature markets lagged behind: North America registered 40.4 million units and Western Europe 35.8 million units.
Gartner attributed the year-on-year decline in Greater China to longer replacement cycles and consumers opting to purchase higher-quality smartphones. The firm also noted that larger vendors continued to consolidate their positions while smaller brands lost market share.
Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner, warned that shortages of flash memory and OLED displays could impact the supply of premium smartphones later in the year. “We’ve already seen Huawei’s P10 affected by a flash memory shortage,” Gupta said. “Smaller, established brands such as HTC, LG and Sony are being squeezed between aggressive Chinese competitors and the dominant premium-market positions of Samsung and Apple.”
Original coverage referenced industry analysis on shifting market dynamics and component constraints affecting premium device availability.