Global smartphone shipments reached 346 million units

Although global smartphone shipments fell sharply in early 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, the smartphone market has slowly picked up pace again over the past year. According to a report by International Data Corporation (IDC), global smartphone shipments increased by more than 25% in the first quarter of 2021. The total number of smartphones shipped by all vendors during the quarter reached approximately 346 million units.

“The recovery is progressing faster than expected, with strong demand for smartphones evident globally. However, amidst this incredible growth, we experienced one of the worst quarters in smartphone history in 2020. “Let’s not forget that we are comparing this to the beginning of the pandemic in the first quarter of 2020, when large parts of the supply chain were halted and China was completely locked down.” said Nabila Popal, research director for Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers at IDC.

According to the IDC report, the accelerated growth in smartphone shipments is a result of strong growth in markets such as China and the Asia-Pacific region (excluding China and Japan). The two largest smartphone markets grew by 30% and 28%, respectively, and accounted for half of global shipments, approximately 173 million units.

Top 5 smartphone manufacturers in the world

Additionally, it provided a bit of a shock to the competitive scene as the market recovers from demand, supply and manufacturing issues caused by the ongoing pandemic. First, Huawei finally fell out of the top five manufacturers on the global smartphone shipment chart (image below) due to a dispute with the US government.

This has paved the way for other smartphone manufacturers, primarily Chinese brands such as Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo, to climb the charts. The above companies grew by 14.1%, 10.8%, and 10.1%, respectively, and took the 3rd, 4th, and 5th positions in the global smartphone shipment ranking.

According to the report, as the high-end market share was captured by tech giants like Apple and Samsung, the low- and mid-priced segments were also dominated by the three smartphone brands mentioned above. In fact, Apple recently reported a staggering $89.6 billion in revenue for the second quarter of 2021.

Meanwhile, Samsung returned to the top spot with over 75.3 million devices shipped during the quarter and a market share of 21.8%. Samsung’s growth was boosted by the Galaxy S21 series, but the iPhone 12 series was a similar success for the Cupertino giant, shipping around 55.1 million units. This gave Apple an additional 16% market share.

Ryan Reese, IDC’s vice president of worldwide mobile device trackers, said many smartphone companies are looking to grab the market share left by LG. Since the company recently exited the smartphone industry, “it’s safe to think there are six to 10 brands looking at this share opportunity,” Reese said.