LG, Huawei and ZTE are the up-and-comers in the smartphone market, but they have a long way to go. The latest report on the installed base of smartphones worldwide showed that Huawei and ZTE have yet to break into the top five brands, and LG ranks fifth behind HTC and Motorola, and of course behind Samsung and Apple.
LG’s market share actually slipped 0.3% during the first three months of the year, and some analysts think that Nokia outsold the Korean manufacturer. HTC and Motorola both saw their market shares fall as well, while Apple and Samsung surged ahead. The March 2013 smartphone subscriber market shares reported by comScore were:
Apple 39.0%
Samsung 21.7%
HTC 9.0%
Motorola 8.5%
LG 6.8%
Huawei and ZTE did not make the list of the top five manufacturers ranked by market share, but they should show up within the next few quarters if current trends continue. Both are in the top five when ranked by sales of new smartphones during the first quarter. That list, published last month by IDC, ranks the vendors as follows:
Samsung: 70.7 million smartphones, 32.7% of worldwide smartphone shipments (up from last year)
Apple: 37.4 million smartphones, 17.3% of worldwide smartphone shipments (down from last year)
LG: 10.3 million smartphones, 4.8% of worldwide smartphone shipments (up from last year)
Huawei: 9.9 million smartphones, 4.6% of worldwide smartphone shipments (up from last year)
ZTE: 9.1 million smartphones, 4.2% of worldwide smartphone shipments (up from last year)
IDC also said that during the first quarter of this year, smartphones outsold feature phones for the first time.
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