Apple’s market share drops to 15.3%, Samsung leads at 24.5%

According to a new report from leading researcher IDC, mobile sales went completely flat during the first quarter of 2016. All smartphone manufacturers saw a drop in their market share but Apple saw a significant drop landing at 15.3%.

Apple’s Q1 sales for 2016 have amounted to 51.2 million, compared to 61.2 million units sold in Q1 of 2015 with a market share of 18.3%. Samsung on the other hand shipped 81.9 million smartphones with a market share of 24.5%, down only 0.1% from last year’s Q1. The overall sales have also hit a new low. The smartphone shipments have totalled to 334.9 million with an increase of only 500,000 units in one year.

Apple launched iPhone SE last month, which was targeted at challenging Android phones in places where Apple’s sky-high prices have been an issue. However, that seemed to have not solved the problem at hand, with numbers going further down.

While the big guns are caught up in a rivalry to out-perform the other, Chinese smartphone manufacturers have quietly climed up to grab spots in the top 5. Huawei, OPPO and Vivo made it to the top of the table. While their market share is still very small as compared to Apple and Samsung, there is no denying that they are undergoing a very fast growth.

Huawei shipped 27.5 million handsets during the quarter for 8.2 percent market share. Its market share was 5.2 percent one year ago. If they keep rising up the charts like this, they could potentially give Samsung and Apple a run for their money with their beautifully designed yet economical smartphones.

OPPO and Vivo pushed out Lenovo and Xiaomi respectively for the fourth and fifth spots on the top smartphone vendors list.