Smartphone Shipments up 2.7 Percent in Q3 2017

Smartphone OEMs shipped a total of 373.1 million smartphones worldwide in Q3 2017. Shipment volumes increased by 2.7 percent year-over-year (Y-o-Y), and by 7.4 percent quarter-on-quarter. In Q3 2017, all of the top five vendors experienced positive Y-o-Y growth according to IDC, with Xiaomi’s growth being the highest as it doubled its sales from this quarter a year ago. Asia-Pacific, excluding China and Japan, performed the best by far as their growth was in double digits. The smartphone industry has continued to grow, but at a much slower pace than in previous years. The report stated that other smartphone OEMs outside of the top five leading vendors continue to struggle, and the industry leaders are quickly forming two camps. The first camp consists of Samsung, Apple, and Huawei; all of them are able to drive significant volumes at the high end. The second camp consists of Chinese OEMs that are finding success outside of their home market of China.

Samsung remained the overall leader in the worldwide smartphone market with 83.3 million units shipped, up 9.5 percent from last year. In the second position, Apple’s smartphone shipments increased to 46.7 million units, which were driven by the launch of the new iPhone 8 family and which were up 2.6 percent from the 45.5 million units last year. Huawei remained third, and according to IDC, the company continues to gain momentum in the market as it shipped 39.1 million units, up 16.1 percent from last year. Oppo’s shipments grew by 19 percent Y-o-Y in Q3 2017 with 30.7 million smartphones shipped in the quarter. Xiaomi had the strongest Y-o-Y growth even though it remained in fifth position worldwide. The company more than doubled its shipments from 13.6 million in Q3 2016 to 27.6 million in Q3 2017.