Apple overtakes Samsung, as the World's largest smartphone maker

Some new numbers from research firm Gartner show that Apple surpassed Samsung in worldwide smartphone sales during the fourth quarter of 2014, and become the world’s biggest smartphone maker. Samsung lost the number one spot to Apple for the first time since 2011. Apple slightly passed Samsung, as the two companies had quarterly sales of 74.8 million and 73 million smartphone units. Apple’s 20.4% market share was also significantly higher than Samsung’s 19.9% share, this was during the three-month period ending December.


The publication wrote “With Apple dominating the premium phone market and the Chinese vendors increasingly offering quality hardware at lower prices, it is through a solid ecosystem of apps, content and services unique to Samsung devices that Samsung can secure more loyalty and longer-term differentiation at the high end of the market,” said Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner.

Strategy Analytics reported in January that Apple and Samsung were tied as the top smartphone makers during the fourth quarter, although their findings were based on overall shipments and not actual sales.

In addition, Samsung smartphone sales figures always have errors in its margin, however, as the South Korean tech giant does not officially disclose smartphone sales and leaves research firms to estimate.



Samsung remained the number one smartphone vendor worldwide in 2014 overall, with an estimated 307.6 million smartphone sales to capture 24.7% market share.

Apple took second place with 191.4 million iPhones which were sold during the year, representing 15.4% market share. Lenovo, which acquired the smartphone making division of Motorola, took third with 81.4 million smartphone sales in 2014 for 6.5% market share.



Recently, Samsung announced their latest flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, each capable and compatible with a new mobile payments service called Samsung Pay. The smartphones will be released on April 10th, and will arrive in a list of different countries.

In the United States, the handsets will be available on AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile and also on sale through Amazon, Best Buy, Costco, Sam’s Club, Walmart and  Target.