TrendForce, an analyst firm that doesn’t exactly have the same notoriety as say Gartner or Strategy Analytics, has put out their Q1 2013 smartphone shipment data for all to see. They say that Samsung shipped three out of every ten smartphone manufactured during the quarter. Apple meanwhile had a 17.3% share of the market.
What I want to focus on is their China data. TrendForce says that Samsung had a 17% share of the Chinese smartphone market, and they did that by taking away sales from local Chinese vendors. Lenovo, the number two player, shipped only 7.6 million smartphones. That’s 15% fewer than their intended goal.
There’s also the elephant in the room; the “others” category. It’s made up of no name brands that get a few sales here are there, but obviously don’t hold a candle to big tier players. “Others” now consist of nearly a quarter of the global market. The pace of growth doesn’t seem to be slowing down either. Looking at Q1 data for the PC market, “others” make up 43% of that industry, so will we eventually see a similar thing happen to the smartphone space?
