Research firm IDG reports the global smartphone market grew 25% in the third quarter of 2014, with Apple hanging in there in second place, Samsung losing marketshare while retaining its lead, and Chinese phone maker Xiaomi grabbing a surprising third place in the rankings.
Samsung continued to hold on to its position at the top of the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker rankings for the quarter ending in September. The company shipped 78.1 million units to grab a 23.8% piece of the market. That figure reflects an 8.5% decline form the same period the year before.
Apple took second place in the list, shipping 39.27 million iPhones for the quarter, up 16.1% from the previous year. Those numbers were good for 12% of the total, down slightly from 12.9% in 2013. IDC made note of the fact that Apple’s iPhone 5s and 5C models contributed to a bulk of the company’s sales. (The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were released in September, near the end of the quarter.)
The big gainer in the quarter was Chinese handset maker Xiaomi, posting a year over year gain of 211.3%, with 17.3 million units shipped, up from 5.6 million last year. It’s marketshare jumped from 2.1% in Q3 2013 to 5.3% for Q3 2014.
Leno and LG filled out the top five, with 16.9 million and 16.8 million smartphones shipped, respectively.
Huawei, who took 3rd behind Apple in the second quarter of 2014, was not in the top five for the third quarter.
IDC says a total of 327.6 million smartphone shipments and sales took place in the third quarter, a 25.2% increase from the same time last year.
