Apple loses largest smartphone maker title to Samsung

John Cusack

April 29, 2015

Apple, who has been considered the largest smartphone manufacturer for the past couple of years, has just lost that title in the face of Samsung after analysts revealed the new numbers for Q1 of 2015. Apple used to be the largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, but it seems like Samsung’s Galaxy S6 is faring too well for Apple to keep up with that. The numbers were reported by Strategy Analytics today and they reveal that Samsung sold quite a few more smartphones in the first quarter of the year than Apple did.

According to the analyst reports, Samsung sold about 83.2 million smartphones from January 1st through April, which is considerably higher than what Apple did. The numbers reveal that Apple sold 20 million less smartphones, approximately 61.2 million units in the first quarter of the year. That’s quite the jump from Samsung and we’re sure the company is popping champagne as we speak. How many companies can say that they’ve overtaken Apple as the largest smartphone manufacturer? It’s not a first, but for Samsung, it’s an enormous opportunity to capitalize upon.

Surprisingly, the company that placed third on the “largest smartphone manufacturer” scale of the analytics company is actually Motorola-Lenovo,  with 18.8 million smartphones sold in the first quarter. Although the numbers reported for Apple and Samsung might not be completely accurate, as they come from analysts rather than company reports, they do point out that Samsung has had more traction with customers than Apple in 2015 so far. Whether the Samsung Galaxy S6 will influence these numbers even more and make Apple the runner-up for the rest of the year is debatable. Our previous reports from insiders suggest that the Galaxy S6 isn’t selling as well as it was supposed to thus far, but just as the Apple reports, those ones also come from analysts and news reports. Until companies do a full report on their products, we can’t say for sure whether Apple has truly lost the largest smartphone maker title to Samsung or not. Considering that these are reports just for the first quarter of the year, things might take a very different turn at the end of the year.