According to the numbers that have come in for the third quarter, it appears that Samsung has passed up Apple as the top handset shipper in the mobile world. Strategy Analytics reported that Samsung shipped more smartphones in the July to September time period than Apple, but that does not mean that Samsung’s sales were more than Apple. Samsung does not disclose the number of sales from their smartphones, so right now there is now way to know. Apple, on the other hand, said that they sold over 17 million iPhone’s in the third quarter. Those numbers are up 21 percent over the same period from last year.
The number of smartphones shipped by Samsung hit 28 million for the third quarter and that gave the company a pretty good market share of 24 percent. The 24 percent market share is almost 10 percent higher than Apple, which dropped to 15 percent in the same quarter time period, moving Apple into second place and leave Nokia in third place with 14 percent market share. Since there are no real sales numbers from all three handset makers, it is hard to determine which company actually is top on the list, but my guess is that Apple’s iPhone is still going to be king, at least for that quarter.
Since Apple has three versions of the iPhone, it is hard to believe that they can keep up with companies like Samsung who currently offer 18 different Android powered smartphones on their website, plus any Windows Phone powered smartphones, as well. At the same time you could say that the iPhone is so popular that it can outsell 18 other handsets from Samsung all by itself.
Apparently the recent patent lawsuits haven’t really been slowing down the shipments of Samsung smartphones, even though the company has been banned to sell the smartphone in some countries. The competition is very heated and it’s a global marketplace where each of the two companies would love to have more market share, but the relationship between the two companies does not stop there. Samsung is stealing market share by shipping more smartphones, but at the same time they provide Apple with components for the iPhone and iPad, so is selling more smartphones than Apple a good thing or a bad thing? It could be looked at as a win/win from this angle.
