Gartner: Xiaomi, Apple on the rise, Samsung falters

Gartner has crunched the numbers for Q3 and found that feature phones continue to decline sharply (down 25%), while smartphones are on the rise (up 20%). The mix is currently 66% smartphone, 34% feature phone and this decline is mostly hurting Samsung and Nokia.

In developing regions like Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa smartphones grew by as much as 50%. The US grew the fastest among developed markets, while Western Europe saw a small decline.

Smartphones from China are the big threat – cheap and with plenty of specs and availability has been expanding outside China. Apple's new iPhone duo also proved to be hot sellers and Gartner expects they'll be breaking records in the holiday season.

Samsung took a hit in both the smartphone and feature phone division and declined nearly 8 points over the last year. In China, Samsung's biggest market, sales went down 28.6%, but demand in Western Europe and Asia declined as well.

Apple meanwhile marks a small uptick, sales were up 26%, though due to market growth the market share went up only marginally.

Then, by a hair, is Huawei. The established Chinese company climbed up to third place, but Xiaomi and Lenovo are breathing down its neck. Xiaomi is a newcomer to the Top 5 list, this time last year it barely had 1.5% of the market and now it's up to 5%. It's already the market leader in China.

As for OSes, Android moved up a notch and maintains its 80+ percent market domination. Chief rival iOS also managed a small improvement. More worrying is that Windows Phone experienced a drop – according to analysts Microsoft gained some momentum with the launch of the new generation mid-rangers, but it doesn’t show yet.

BlackBerry has slipped under the 1% mark, which doesn’t bode well for its continued participation in the smartphone race.

Finally, here's a table that shows total phone sales – Samsung and Nokia took big hits, while companies that gave up on feature phones look much more stable.

Source