Smartphone Wars: Full Year 2015 Final Top 10 by brands, Top 5 by OS, Installed Base Dec 2015, and Q4 data

Its another year done in the smartphone bloodbath. Yet another of the giants of the industry prior to the revolution of the iPhone from 2007, has fallen now out of hte Top 10 (Sony). The remaining players are the two South Koreans who were in the game long before Apple entered. They now face seven Chinese (with more coming). Plus Apple taking the cream from the top. The OS wars settled too last year, finally into a two-OS race, as Windows finally admitted what we all knew, its not viable in the mass market. So lets do the smartphone numbers. I start with the big table that everybody tends to want.

2015 FULL YEAR SMARTPHONE SALES STATISTICS

Rank . Brand . . . . 2015 units . . Share . . 2014 units . . Share . . 2013 units . . Share

1 (1)  . Samsung  . 322.0 M . . . .22.4% . . 314.2 M . . . 24.2% . . .311.4 M . . . 31.5% 
2 (2)  . Apple  . . . . 231.4 M . . . .16.1% . . 192.7 M . . . 14.8% . . 153.4 M . . . 15.5%
3 (4)  . Huawei . . . 108.0 M . . . . 7.5% . . 75.0 M . . . . 5.8% . . . 52.0 M . . . . 5.3%
4 (3) . Lenovo  . . . . 76.3 M . . . . 5.3% . . 95.0 M . . . . 7.3% . . . 46.2 M . . . . 4.7%
5 (5)  . Xiaomi . . . . . 71.0 M . . . . 4.9%. . 61.1 M . . . . .4.7%. . . . - - - - . . .  . . . - - 
6 (6)  . LG  . . . . . . . 59.7 M . . . . .4.2% . . 59.1 M . . . . 4.5% . . . 47.6 M . . . . 4.8%
7 (8) . . ZTE . . . . . .  57.2 M . . . . 4.0% . . 46.1 M . . . . 3.5%  . . 40.0 M . . . . 4.0%
8 (-) . . Oppo . . . . . . 50.0 M . . . . 3.5% . . - - - . . . . . . . - - -  . . . . - - - . . . . . . - - - 
9 (7) . . Coolpad . . . 45.5 M . . . . 3.2% . . 50.4 M. . . . . 3.9% . . .35.3M . . .  . 3.6% 
10 (9) . TCL-Alcatel . 43.5 M . . . . 3.2% . . 41.4 M . . . . .3.2%. . . . - - - - . . .  . . . - - 
Other . . . . . . . . . . 372.7 M . . . 25.9%
TOTAL . . . . . . . .1,437.3 M . . . . . . . . . 1,300.6 M . . . . . . . . . . 990.0 M
Source: TomiAhonen Almanac 2016
This data may be freely used and repeated


So first off, Apple did pick up one point of market share in 2015. I predicted they would continue the four-year market share losing streak. So I was off by a point (in reality, 1.3 points of market share. So sue me haha, pretty darn close I'd say). The big reason why Apple managed to pick up share, was that the smartphone market slowed down strongly in the second half of 2015, the Christmas sales bump was the weakest we've seen since we started to measure the industry. So also obviously the full-year sales fell 63 million units below my predicted 1.5 Billion (forecast off by 4%, still not bad). Thats what happens when the global economy slows and/or the largest market for a given tech (China, smartphones) slows. But not bad. I was obviously correct when some were hyping Xiaomi, that it couldn't repeat its rapid growth outside of China. It was in 5th rank globally in 2014 and that was the rank it held in 2015. Samsung continued safely as the world's largest smartphone maker and the challeger to Apple is Huawei. The one big brand doing less than expected was Lenovo. The one former brand that just stumbled badly, was Sony (now out of the Top 10. ts small silver lining was, that they at least outsold the former Nokia unit, Lumia, now under Microsoft control).

Also who is next bubbling to get into the Top 10? Its not yet the time of the India brands although Micromax, Karbonn and Lava are doing their strong climbs in that rapidly expanding market. The next one just outside the Top 10 is already in the Top 10 on a quarterly basis - Vivo of China. The race this year at the bottom of the table is between Oppo, Coolpad, TCL-Alcatel and Vivo (and other Chinese brands also coming). For those who need last year's stats, that blog is here.

Next lets do the OS table.

2015 FULL YEAR OPERATING SYSTEM MARKET SHARES

Rank . . OS . . . . . . . . .  2015 units . . share . . .2014 units . . share . . 2013 units . . share
1 (1) . .  Android  . . . . 1,168.8 M . . . . 81.3% . . 1,062 M . . . . . 78% . . . 767 M . . . . . 65%
2 (2) . .  iOS . . . . . . . . . 231.4 M . . . . 16.1% . . . 193 M . . . . . 16% . . . 153 M . . . . . 20%
3 (6) . .  Windows Phone . 28.6 M . . . . 2.0% . . . .35 M . . . . . . 3% . . . .  33 M  . . . . . . 3%
4 (3) . .  Blackberry . . . . . . 4.0 M . . . .  0.3% . . . 9.0 M  . . . . . .2% . . . . 23 M . . . . . . 5%
5 (-) . . . Tizen . . . . . . . . . . 3.0 M . . . . . 0.2%
Others  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 M . . . .  0.1%
TOTAL  . . . . . . . . . . . 1,437.3 M . . . . . . . . . . . 1,301 M  . . . . . . .. . . .  990 M
Source: TomiAhonen Almanac 2016
This data may be freely used and repeated

So Android now powers 4 out of every 5 new smartphones sold. Was inevitable. Apple does almost all the rest. Windows Phone was a total bogus OS because it was always sold at a loss, and a quarter of their phones were never even activated. As Firefox and Ubuntu quit the races and Blackberry is transitioning to Android, the only two OS players who are left to give some noise, are Tizen and Sailfish. Tizen does clock in, with sales measured in millions and could see growth if Samsung could be bothered to market more than one phone at any one time, in only a few markets.

Then lets look at the Installed Base:

INSTALLED BASE OF SMARTPHONES BY OPERATING SYSTEM AS OF 31 DECEMBER 2015

Rank . OS Platform . . . . Units . . . Market share  Was 2014
1 . . . . Android . . . . . . . 1,889 M . . . 76 % . . . . . . ( 76 %)  
2 . . . . iOS  . . . . . . . . . . . 497 M . . . 20 % . . . . . . ( 19 %) 
5 . . . . Windows Phone . . 44 M . . . . 2 % . . . . . . (   2 %) 
4 . . . . Blackberry . . . . . .  15 M . . . . 1 % . . . . . . (   2 %) 
Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10 M . . . . 0 %
TOTAL Installed Base . 2,475 M smartphones in use at end of Q4, 2015
Source: TomiAhonen Almanac 2016
This data may be freely used and repeated

 
So thats your worldwide smartphone market right now. 2.5 Billion smartphones are in use worldwide. 1.9 Billion of them use Android OS and 500 million are iPhones. Note that Apple's market share continues to be above their sales market share - because iPhones have a far longer life span, they often are handed down to other family members or sold. While many Android devices are used relatively briefly then replaced. Obviously Windows and Blackberry are dead OS platforms, this is the last year that BB even appears with a whole percentage point (barely, rounding off from 0.6%) and Windows Phone is nearing that same fate, its actual percentage is 1.7% and falling.

Then lets do the horse-race part, the quarterly results for Q4:

BIGGEST SMARTPHONE MANUFACTURERS BY UNIT SALES IN Q4 2015

Rank . . . Manufacturer . Units . . . Market Share . Was Q2 2015 
1 (1) . . . Samsung . . . .  82.4 M . . 20.5% . . . . . . . ( 23.7% ) 
2 (2) . . . Apple  . . . . . . . 74.8 M . . 18.6% . . . . . . . ( 13.5% ) 
3 (3) . . . Huawei  . . . . . . 30.6 M . . . 7.6% . . . . . . . (   7.7% ) 
5 (4) . . . Lenovo .  . . . . . 22.6 M . . . 5.6% . . . . . . . (   5.3% )
4 (5) . . . Xiaomi . . . . . . .18.6 M . . . 4.6% . . . . . . .  (   5.2% )
7 (7) . . . ZTE  . . . . . . . . . 17.0 M . . . 4.2% . . . . . . . (   4.0% )
8 (8) . . . Oppo . . . . . . . . . 16.0 M . . . 4.0% . . . . . . . (   3.5% )
6 (6) . . . LG  . . . . . . . .  . 15.3 M . . . 3.8% . . . . . . . (   4.2% ) 
10 (10) . . TCL/Alcatel . . . 12.4 M . . . 3.1% . . . . . . . (  2.9% ) 
9 (9) . . Vivo . . . . . . . . . . 10.2 M . . . 2.5% . . . . . . . (   3.4% ) 
Others . . . . . . . . . . . . ..102.3 M
TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . ..   402.0 M

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 11 March 2016, based on manufacturer and industry data
This table may be freely shared

So there you go. Another year is done. The race is pretty well over. Now the interesting item for 2016 is how will Apple's iPhone Nano do. If priced to sell, it could actually propel Apple into more sales growth. Meanwhile Samsung's warnings of stalled sales could have these two going head-to-head by the end of the year. Theoretically we might see a race for top dog in 2017. But perhaps the more interesting play is Huawei, can it keep growing there at number 3, and rise up to challenge the two.

But as I've warned back in 2014, this race was done and dusted. The exciting dramatic parts of the race are gone. Now its a box-mover's race for the handset brands and Android rules the OS on the most popular consumer gadget ever sold. What kind of level should we see in smartphone sales this year? About 1.6 Billion should be the sales level for the year. So don't let anybody tell you there isn't strong growth in this market, its only that the hypergrowth stage has passed.

Comments

[chithanh]

@Cycnus
I think the Spotify message is clear, no new functions for the WP8 app. They will continue to fix bugs for now. Whether a UWP app will come at all is not decided yet.

And you can't really blame Spotify when Microsoft leads by example. Microsoft's own first party apps are iOS first, then Android, and then maybe (or maybe not) Windows.
Recently it was MileIQ which Microsoft bought out in November 2015 and started advertising on outlook.com in mid February 2016 - for iOS and Android only.

[CorrectionsForYou]

@Cycnus
Here's worse than Spotify:
HERE Maps drops support for Windows Phone AND Windows 10!

http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/15/11234462/here-maps-support-windows-phone-windows-10

[Wayne Borean]

Here's something interesting. Chap was having a heart attack and he noticed his heart rate as incredibly high when he looked at his Apple Watch. Having one saved his life.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/7000655/Builder-life-saved-by-Apple-Watch.html

[ChrisB]

Hold the press! Elop has a new job, according to El Reg: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/15/stephen_elop_to_pop_up_in_oz/

They're probably doomed.

[Correctionsforyou]

Sell all Telstra share now if you have any.

Those who want to tinker you iPhone just gets the SDK and you can do what ever you like with it and btw it is free.

[Wayne Borean]

For those arguing about Open and Closed mobiles...

http://recode.net/2016/03/16/mossberg-the-false-debate-between-open-and-closed-in-tech/

[abdul muis]

It's Lenovo turn to produce Windows Phone.
http://www.nokiapoweruser.com/lenovo-windows-10-mobile-phablet-tablet-leaks-in-china
"Lenovo Windows 10 Mobile Phablet leaks in China"

But Microsoft clearing their own stock...
http://mspoweruser.com/deal-alert-upgrade-to-the-lumia-550-from-only-19-99/
"Deal Alert: Upgrade to the Lumia 550 from only £19.99"

[Tester]

@Lullz:

"You may need and want all those things but they are almost irrelevant to the unit sales."

... and that's reason enough to cripple the hardware? I have to say I am dead tired of this attitude in general, catering to the lowest common denominator in general and not giving the user sufficient choice.

It's not that the others are innocent here - far from it - but Apple definitely takes the cake when it comes to running their customer base like a dictatorship. If they say something is bad they remove the functionality and give a rat's ass what their customers really want. Only supremely stupid people willingly accept that.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi everybody

Yeah.. Can't believe that one. So Stephen Elop has managed to dupe yet another victim. What rock was Andy Penn of Telstra living under, to miss it how badly Elop fucked up Nokia. But the timing is essentially perfect for Elop, Penn was hired outside of telecoms, from Insurance, and joined Telstra last year. So Elop was able to somehow fool him.

It tells us tons about how incompetent Andy Penn is, to have missed the CLEAR WARNING SIGNS that Elop is a clueless moron when he keeps getting fired and his name is synonymous with failure. But yeah. I wrote my blog about it. Telstra will now be under extra scrutiny and anything they do, that normally I'd let slide as 'experimentation' in a telco trying to learn to do marketing - will now be exposed on this blog as blunders (because of Elop is involved, the one thing we can be sure about is.. there will be blunders). And how long can Elop remain at Telstra. I don't think he'll last 3 years.

The question becomes, is Andy Penn really this incompetent? If so, he should be ousted soon too. Hiring Elop is a clear sign of being unfit to be CEO.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Winter]

@Tomi
Maybe MS want to buy a market leading telco? Or, do "marketing deals".

That could expand the market for Windows Phone. No more "we don't sell those phones".

[chithanh]

@Wayne Borean
Oh gosh, that Recode article is so full of stupid, I don't know where to start.
The author uses "open" to refer to "open source software" and "open platform" interchangeably, when they are actually quite different things.

[neil]

@PWE
"The watch is not it - it's an expensive toy for iPhone users. Nothing more. It will survive as long as there is hype, but like Sarah Palin there is no substance."

And yet IDC reports that Apple captured 61.3% market share in smart watches in 2015 while Android Wear (all Android manufacturers put together) only managed a measly 15.2% in 2015. (and the Apple Watch was only available for 3 quarters vs a full year for Android - Android is getting creamed!)

Apple reports that the Apple Watch is selling faster than both the iPod and the iPhone at launch. The iPod took 4 years to sell 10 million units and the iPhone took 7 quarters to sell 13 million units. In contrast, the 500 dollar ASP Apple Watch has sold around 12 million units in a mere 3 quarters.

The Watch is also meaningfully moving the dial financially for Apple with Apple's "Other Products" category which includes the Apple Watch and the AppleTV surged 62% YoY growing from 2.7 Billion dollars to 4.4 Billion this quarter.

As a comparison, Other Products has increased from 2.7% of Apple’s iPhone revenue to 8.4% of this quarter’s enormous iPhone revenue. For perspective, that 4.4 Billion dollars for Other Products is equivalent to 21% of Google’s ENTIRE revenue in Q4 2015 and is growing a massive 62% YoY.

Sounds like a pretty bright future to me.

[neil]

@PWE
"The TV is not it, either - Sony and Microsoft both have a vastly superior offering, and would have no problem expanding on a TV platform, with a more open strategy than Apple can hope to match."

Not sure why you reckon the PS4 or the Xbox are more open than AppleTV considering the vastly greater numbers of iOS apps and greater ease of publishing to the App Store compared to either MS or Sony's platforms?

In terms of unit sales, Apple TV is second only to the cheap Chromecast which is nothing more than a simple wireless HDMI video dongle requiring other devices to work, whereas the AppleTV is a stand-alone app-enabled platform.

However, Apple is absolutely dominating the TV EveryWhere market (paid streaming) in terms of usage, leaving not just the Chromecast, but Android as a whole and even Windows PCs and SmartTVs AND gaming consoles like the xbox and PS4 in the dust.

Apple had 61.2% market share of which 22.3% came from the iPad, 18.2% were iPhones and 12.8% was from the AppleTV.

All of the Android platform combined (tablets and mobile) only managed a 9% market share and the Windows PC only managed 18%, Roku captured 7%, gaming consoles a pitiful 2%, Amazon Fire 1% and SmartTVs 0.7%.

And these Adobe Digital Index figures came out before the new app-enabled 4th gen Apple TV was released.

So much for "Sony and Microsoft both have a vastly superior offering, and would have no problem expanding on a TV platform". :-)

[neil]

@PWE
"In mobile, Apple is stuck between a rock and a hard place - The premium segment is won and will rapidly shrink the coming years, to maybe say 200-230M units or even less. If Apple keeps dominating then the premium segment will decline even further to the point of maybe 100M a year (since being stuck with a premium differing platform will not help them when the other 90% are using Android)."

I think you're getting confused with the Android Premium market which has not just shrunk, it has collapsed with sales plummeting from 280m units in 2012 to 190m units in 2015.

In contrast, Apple's premium iPhone sales have surged from 136m to 231m in the same timeframe.

Where's your *evidence* that Apple's sales are going to plunge to "maybe a 100m a year"?

You were one of the many predicting Apple would fall to 12% market share in 2015 but instead they grew to 16.1%. Certainly no evidence there.

[Tester]

@Neil:

"And yet IDC reports that Apple captured 61.3% market share in smart watches in 2015 while Android Wear (all Android manufacturers put together) only managed a measly 15.2% in 2015. (and the Apple Watch was only available for 3 quarters vs a full year for Android - Android is getting creamed!)"

This only shows that there is no interest in this market segment in general outside a very specific group of customers - namely those who think they have to use it as a status symbol.
As a matter of fact, the watch is the ultimate Sheep product.

The general public's interest in smartwatches is zero and the long term viability very questionable.

Of course a true iFool gets blinded by the numbers, but never asks what causes these numbers.

[neil]

@DarwinPhish
"Your estimate of 497M iPhones implies the other 503M devices are Macs, iPads, iPod Touches, Apple TVs and Apple Watches. Based on the cumulative numbers of each device sold, I don't think this split is correct."

I agree. Apple has only sold the following in the last 4 years:
78m Macs
12m Apple Watches
15m AppleTVs (approx)

That leaves us with perhaps 890m active iOS devices.

Apple hasn’t sold enough iPod touches or iPads to make up the difference.

You’d have to assume every iPad ever made (282m since 2010) was still active and last time Apple reported iPod sales was 12.7m in 2013 and falling, of which only half were iPod touches.

I really do think all the evidence points to there being significantly more active iPhones worldwide than 497m.

[neil]

@Tester
"This only shows that there is no interest in this market segment in general outside a very specific group of customers"

And yet everywhere you look, analysts are saying wearables are the hot new growth market.
I'm afraid that just because Android has utterly failed in this new market, it doesn't mean it isn't a big thing for the rest of the world or for Apple.

Already smartwatch sales have eclipsed the Swiss Watch market in sales, the Apple Watch is vastly out-growing both the iPod and the iPhone's launch growth figures and Apple's Watch and AppleTV revenue is already equal to 21% of the total revenue of the second largest company in the world by market cap - Google - and growing by a MASSIVE 67% YoY.

Just because your favourite platform is MIA in this huge new market does not discount Apple's amazing dominance.

[Correctionsforyou]

Apple will Finally! Hit! The Indian market! 21/3/2016! BOOM and yes up is down and left is still the best. We will continue this exercise so that there is no Windows nor Android. Linux will be there around Apple UNIX.

[Per "wertigon" Ekström]

@Neil:

No use arguing with a person not interested in facts, only the kool-aid story he's been fed by Apple.

I could debunk your claims easily but since it's obvious you are either delusional or a shill (or possibly both) - why even bother? :)

[Emilia Srikandi]

Samsung S7 preorder more so apple 6S.
Samsung win
Apple lost