These figures are based on research by Bankless Times. They are in line with those from other well-known market analysis firms, such as Canalys and IDC. All of them put Samsung on top, followed by Apple with around 56 million iPhone shipments and an 18 percent market share. This doesn’t come as a surprise, though. Samsung usually leads three out of the four quarterly shipment charts every year. The year-ending quarter, i. e. October to December is Apple’s time. That’s when its new iPhone models hit the market globally and sell like hotcakes. Q4 2021 was no different, with Apple shipping 87 million iPhones to capture a 24 percent share of the global market. But Samsung regained the crown in the following quarter. Xiaomi, the Chinese firm that has been flying high since the US sanctions struck its compatriot Huawei, comes third with a shipment volume of 39.9 million smartphones. It accounted for 12.7 percent of the global market in Q1 2022. Oppo and Vivo, both of which are subsidiaries of Chinese multinational conglomerate BBK Electronics that also owns the OnePlus and Realme brands, complete the top five. They shipped 27.4 million and 25.3 million smartphones in the first quarter of the year, respectively. The remaining smartphone makers, such as Motorola, Nokia, ASUS, Sony, and others, sold a combined 91.4 million smartphones in Q1 2022. If you add it all up, total smartphone shipments for the period come in at 313.6 million.
Smartphone shipments declined in Q1 2022
The shipment volume of 313.6 million in Q1 2022 marks a nine percent year-on-year (YoY) decline from the same period a year earlier. The new report cites IDC data that says smartphone shipments topped 344 million units in Q1 2021. The share decline this year is caused by several factors. The supply chain challenges have affected most vendors. Perhaps Samsung and Apple were the least affected. But factors like economic uncertainties and the global inflation crisis hit the two biggies too. The outlook for Q2 and the rest of the year is also pretty bleak. Samsung has already lowered its sales target for the year by ten percent. Time will tell how the smartphone industry copes with the ongoing challenges.
