Global Q3 smartphone shipments up 9.1 pct

“Emerging markets such as Southeast Asia and India are now the major battlegrounds for vendors as developed markets have become fairly saturated”, TrendForce wrote of the impending slowdown.

Samsung has had a great couple of years, however, it seems as though that might be about to change, with the company having announced its first ever drop in annual smartphone sales.

Worldwide smartphone shipments will likely grow by around 9.3 percent in total this year, however, that’s expected to go down 7.7 percent in 2016. By TrendForce estimates, Samsung will see its first even decline of annual smartphone shipments in 2015 with 1% year-on-year drop. Samsung smartphone sales and market share have both been slowing in their growth over the past few years, largely because of increased competition by Chinese smartphone manufacturers like Huawei and Xiaomi. While until now, we only heard about the company using Synaptics’ variant of Force Touch alongside a magnesium build. Today however press renders of a supposed Galaxy S7 design have surfaced and added to the rumor mill speculation about a trapezoid design that’s futuristic and neat at the same time. TrendForce said it also expects around 10 million units of the Galaxy Note 5 to ship by the end of December.

“Samsung has lost much of its shares in the low-end to mid-range markets to Chinese competitors”, TrendForce said in a report on Tuesday night. Korea’s LG is seen increasing its shipments about 8 percent from 2014, the research firm projected.

TrendForce noted that numerous OEMs unveiled their next-generation flagship devices ahead of the iPhone 6s announcement in September, including Samsung’s Galaxy Note 5, Huawei’s Mate S and Sony Z5 series. Lenovo is now undergoing a company restructuring process, which will provide an opportunity for its smartphone business to start afresh next year.

Huawei, meanwhile, this year so far has shipped 100 million smartphones, becoming the first Chinese smartphone vendor to reach that milestone, according to TrendForce. The combined shipments OPPO and VIVO may also hit the 100 million unit mark, considering that both brands are subsidiaries of BBK Electronics headed Duan Yongping.