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2014 may go down in history as the year in which smartphone sales worldwide finally breached the one billion mark. But its final quarter will be remembered for another thing -- it will mark the time when Samsung lost its throne as the king of smartphone sales.
Samsung has held the title of the world's leader in smartphone sales figures for many years now. The last time that it was not leading was in 2011. But according to a report published by IT research firm Gartner, the new leader is Apple, a long-time Samsung rival.
During the final quarter of 2014, a total 367.5 million smartphones were sold in the world. Apple managed to beat Samsung by selling almost 75 million handsets, which just edges the South Korean company's 73 million mark.
That's pretty close. But still, big credit goes to Apple for winning the race, especially when you consider that in the previous year, Samsung sold more than 83 million smartphones (thanks to its Galaxy line of devices) while the iPhone maker only managed 50 million smartphones sold.
But this year, how things have changed. Samsung's market share has decreased by 10 percentage points over the course of 2014. And of course, in the second half of the year. Apple turned the tables with the release of its massively successful new flagship devices -- the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus.
Apple is not only killing it in raw smartphone sales numbers. When it comes to profits, Apple is also taking the lion's share. As a matter of fact, as reported by Strategy Analytics, Apple accounted for 89 percent of all smartphone profits in the final quarter of the year 2014.
Apart from Apple and Samsung, what about the other players in the mobile industry? Chinese phone makers such as Xiaomi, Lenovo, and Huawei have been doing quite well. Xiaomi in particular more than tripled its smartphone sales in the last year, selling 18.6 million handsets. It still has some work to do though in order to catch up with Lenovo's 24 million and Huawei's 21 million. But even if one combines the figures of these three phone makers, they still would not be able to compete with Apple's and Samsung's dominance.
Apple may have won the final quarter of 2014, but the next quarter (or two) will be an altogether different story. Indeed, the smartphone wars continue to heat up with Samsung recently announcing its two new flagship devices -- the Galaxy S6 and its curvy variant the Galaxy S6 Edge. Will Samsung retake its lead or will Apple retains its place at the top? We will find out after three months.
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