Smartphone shipments estimated to reach 350.9m in Q1 2015

Although Samsung retained leadership of the smartphone market, the company’s shipments fell to just under 82m; furthermore, although its market share rose q-o-q to 23%, this is well down on the 29% it commanded at this time last year. Meanwhile, increased sales in its smartphone division were in part offset by declining tablet and featurephone sales.

Nevertheless, Juniper Research expects Samsung’s performance to improve in the coming months. The S6 and the S6 Edge have had a better reception than the S5, as well as boasting new features in the case of the Edge.

Conversely, Apple achieved record Q1 iPhone shipments of more than 61m, up by 40% y-o-y. In large part, growth was fuelled by a dramatic surge in sales across Greater China, where device sales rose by 71% compared with Q1 2014, resulting in revenues for the region of $16.8bn.

BlackBerry’s decline continued, with shipments at an estimated 1.5m for the quarter. Microsoft also experienced hard times as Lumia stands alone. The cancelling the Asha brand has resulted in an overall y-o-y decline of nearly 40% to less than 9m units. Competition among Chinese vendors has intensified, with Xiaomi posting 14.2m devices, and Lenovo relaunching the Motorola brand in China in January.

Juniper Research anticipates a big quarter ahead for several vendors. The Apple Watch is accompanied by several flagship releases, such as Huawei’s P8, and HTC One M9 and the Xiaomi Mi5.