Global mobile phone sales 2009-2014, by vendor

In this graphic you can see global mobile phone sales to end users each year from 2009 to 2014, broken down by vendor. In 2013, Samsung sold the most mobile phones at more than 444 million. Nokia was the next in line having sold over 250 million phones.

Global mobile phone sales – additional information

Almost two billion mobile phones were sold to the end users worldwide in 2014. Samsung sold about 20 percent of this total, while Nokia’s and Apple’s share of mobile phone sales was at around ten percent each. Samsung has been a global mobile market leader since 2012, as its mobile phone sales have consistently grown over the years. Just in the first three quarters of 2015 alone, Samsung sold almost 290 millions phones worldwide.

Over the years, Samsung's main competitors in the global mobile market have been Nokia and Apple. Nokia was a market leader until 2012, registering a peak of almost 40 percent of the global market share in the second quarter of 2008. Since then, Nokia’s mobile sales have been steadily declining. Apple's market share, on the other hand, has grown from 1.5 percent in the first quarter of 2009 to 13.1 percent in the first quarter of 2015, when the company sold just over 60 million units worldwide.

Nearly 70 percent of the global population is expected to use a mobile phone by 2019, while the number of mobile phone user worldwide is forecast to add up to over 5 billion in the same year. Sales of mobile phones are expected to generate billions of U.S. dollars for industry leaders, such as Samsung and Apple, as the market continues to expand worldwide.