Apple overtakes Samsung in smartphone sales

04 marzo 2015

2 min di lettura

(AGI) Rome, Mar 4 - Apple overtook Samsung to take poleposition in global smartphone shipments in the fourth quarterof 2014, with a 20.4 percent market share and 74.8 million soldagainst Samsung's 19.9 percent and 73 million. Chinesemanufacturer Lenovo, after taking over Motorola, took thirdposition with 24.3 million sold and a 6.6 percent market share.The iPhone 6 proved to be a big hit, causing problems forSamsung. The South Korean firm closed the year 2014 with itsfirst profit drop in three years. Now it has high hopes for itsnew Galaxy S6, which was presented by the company on Monday.The device, which will be launched on April 10 in 20 countries,was well received by experts. They particularly praised thedesign of the S6, which has a body of light metal replacing theplastic body of the previous model, and is free of severalunnecessary applications that occupied a lot of memory and ledto many user complaints. The fact that Apple has overtakenSamsung is surprising after the figures of the third quarter of2013, when the Asian firm still had a 29.5 percent market shareagainst Apple's 17.5 percent. In one year, Samsung lost nearly10 percent of the global smartphone market but only a quarterof those buyers turned to the iPhone. The rest of the marketwas divided between new aggressive Chinese manufacturers:Lenovo, Huawei and Xiaomi, whose market share climbed in oneyear from 2 to 5.1 percent. The West has seen a real boom insmartphone sales in recent years so that a cooling of demandwas to be expected. But the real game is now played on theemerging markets. The reborn BlackBerry knows this and onTuesday unveiled its new BlackBerry Leap, a sophisticated butmidrange product that costs less than 250 euros, a realalternative to the Apple and Samsung devices. "We expect tostabilise our turnover and return to growth," promisedBlackBerry CEO John Chen as a warning to Samsung. . .