Worldwide smartphone sales climbed to 380 million units in the first quarter of 2017, a 9.1 percent year on year rise that was again driven above all by China's top three device makers, said Gartner. Although Samsung and Apple retained the top two spots, the Chinese trio of Huawei, Oppo and Vivo now account for a combined 24 percent of global sales, up 7 percentage points year on year, according to Gartner. The Chinese manufacturers are driving sales with aggressive marketing and competitively priced smartphones that are increasingly equipped with innovative features, taking advantage of the fact buyers are spending more to get a better device, pushing up the average selling prices of certain mobile phone types.
The latest data from Gartner revealed that Samsung's smartphone sales declined 3.1 percent in the first three months of the year, leaving the company with 20.7 percent of the market, due to fierce competition from the Chinese brands at entry level and the continued fallout from the recalled Note 7. Sales if iPhones stayed flat at around 52 million units, resulting in a drop in market share from 14.8 percent to 13.7 percent.
Huawei edged ever closer to the top two thanks to smartphone sales of 34 million units and a market share of 9.0 percent in the first quarter, helped by the popularity of the P9 and P9 Plus over a year after being launched. However, Chinese rivals Oppo and Vivo are fast catching up, with sales of 31 million and 26 million respectively in the first three months of the year.
Oppo achieved the best performance of the quarter, rising to 8.1 percent of the market and the no. 1 position in China thanks to its large network of brick-and-mortar retailers, while Vivo reached 6.8 percent of worldwide sales thanks to its focus on emerging markets in Asia/Pacific, including India, where its sales surged over 220 percent year on year.
