Samsung and Chinese vendors capture smartphone marketshare off a flat Apple

Samsung, along with a number of Chinese vendors including ZTE and Huawei, captured more worldwide smartphone marketshare off Apple during the first quarter of 2013, new figures reveal.

The IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker figures reveal Samsung led the smartphone market with 70.7 million unit shipments and a 32.7% marketshare, up from 44 million and 28.8% year-on-year.

Apple was largely stagnant in second place, with its worldwide smartphone marketshare tumbling to 17% from 23.3% a year earlier, off unit sales off 37.4 million, up slightly from 35 million a year earlier.

The top five vendors were rounded out by LG (4.6% marketshare), along with low-end Chinese manufacturers Huawei (4.6%) and ZTE (4.2%). Their marketshare grew from 3.2%, 3.3%, and 4% respectively.

The broad others category, including Nokia, BlackBerry, Motorola and Sony, accounted for 36.4% of the market and 78.8 million units, up from 57.5 million a year earlier.

According to IDC’s Ramon Llamas, research manager with IDC’s Mobile Phone team, the figures show the growing importance of China to the worldwide smartphone sector.

“A year ago, it was common to see previous market leaders Nokia, BlackBerry (then Research In Motion), and HTC among the top five,” Llamas says.

“While those companies have been in various stages of transformation since, Chinese vendors, including Huawei and ZTE as well as Coolpad and Lenovo, have made significant strides to capture new users with their respective Android smartphones.”