Chinese Brands Challenge Samsung and Apple

The global smartphone market grew by 3 percent in the third quarter of 2017 according to new estimates from market research firm Gartner. Worldwide sales to end users amounted to 383 million units between July and September, up from 372 million in the same period last year. Samsung and Apple defended the top two spots in the market against their challengers from China, who, despite weakening sales in their home market, all posted double-digit sales growth.

Among the top 5, Apple was the only vendor whose sales didn’t grow by at least 10 percent compared to last year’s September quarter. This can largely be attributed to the fact that Apple’s major smartphone release of the year, the iPhone X, wasn’t available until October as opposed to last year’s iPhone 7, which made its debut in September and thus contributed to Q3 sales.

Despite an 11 percent decline in sales compared to Q3 2016, Greater China is still the largest smartphone market in the world. Accounting for 27.9 percent of sales, the Chinese market is more than twice as large as the North American market in terms of unit sales.