In an attempt to expand their OLED screen production Samsung have said to invest another 6 billion Euros to double capacity. Apple is said to bring out phones with the Samsung made OLED screens in 2017. (Photo by Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Android and Samsung continue to dominate Apple in the mobile market
Apple continues to lose ground in the smartphone market, seeing sharp sales declines in China, North America and Western Europe during the second quarter of 2016.
Technology research firm Gartner released their quarterly sales figures for mobile phone manufacturers and the numbers aren’t great for Apple.
Globally, Android phones captured a whopping 86% of the market in the second quarter of 2016 — up from 82.2% in the second quarter of 2015.
The numbers show approximately 297 million new Android smartphones shipped, compared to only 44 million new iPhones.
Many Apple users are likely waiting for the annual upgrade cycle that will bring the release of the iPhone 7 later this year, but these sales numbers are a bad sign for Apple when compared to the second quarter of last year.
Apple’s market share went from 14.6% in Q2 of 2015 to 12.9% in Q2 of 2016, as the company moved nearly four-million fewer phones.
Gartner notes that: “A number of key Android players, such as Samsung with the Galaxy S7, introduced their new high-end devices, but Chinese brands like Huawei and Oppo are also pushing their premium smartphone ranges with more affordable devices.”
Windows mobile continued to tank, as just 2 million new smartphones running Microsoft’s OS were shipped last quarter. That’s a pathetic 0.6% share of the market and a huge drop from the more than 8 million Windows phones that sold in 2015.
Blackberry sold about 400,000 phones running their older BlackBerry 7 and BlackBerry 10 operating systems. We can likely expect those numbers to dwindle to near zero in coming quarters as the company recently pivoted to building hardware that runs a security-optimized version of Android.
“Google is evolving the Android platform fast, which allows Android players to remain at the cutting edge of smartphone technology,” said Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner. “Facing a highly commoditized smartphone market, Google’s focus is to further expand and diversify the Android platform with additional functionalities, like virtual reality, enabling more-intelligent experiences and reach into wearables, connected home devices, in-car entertainment and TV.”
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