Analysts at the research company Canalys have published their new report on the state of affairs in the global smartphone market in the third quarter of 2021. According to them, global smartphone shipments between July and September fell 6% compared to the third quarter of last year. Experts attribute this to the crisis in the semiconductor industry and the shortage of chips, which many smartphone manufacturers have already experienced acutely. Component shortages will continue into the next year, Canalys analysts said. It will take at least one year for supply and demand for semiconductor products to balance.
South Korean giant Samsung became the leading smartphone manufacturer in the third quarter. It managed to win the market back from Xiaomi, which briefly ranked first in shipments earlier this year. Samsung’s market share in the last quarter was 23%, exactly the same as a year ago. But Xiaomi not only lost the title of market leader to Samsung, but also dropped to third place with a market share of 14%.
But despite the general market decline, some brands have shown an increase in smartphone shipments and their market share. These include Apple, Xiaomi and OPPO. Apple’s share for the year increased from 15% to 12%, that is, by three percentage points, which allowed the company to become the second largest smartphone manufacturer in the world after Samsung. As for the Chinese companies Vivo and OPPO, they increased their share by one percentage point over the year from 9% to 10%, respectively, which allowed them to enter the top five mobile brands in the world.
