IDC: Samsung top smartphone brand in 2021 market share

Even though worldwide smartphone shipments declined year over year in the fourth quarter of 2021, Samsung still reigns as the top smartphone brand in 2021 in terms of market share. This is according to the International Data Corporation or IDC. Samsung which boasts a 20.1% market share led the way with a 6% growth year-over-year, followed by Apple and Xiaomi, in second and third respectively. Rounding out the top 5 is OPPO and vivo, which also grew double-digits year-over-year.

Smartphone vendors shipped a total of 362.4 million phones during the fourth quarter of 2021, which was down 3.2% year over year but better than IDC’s forecast. On an annual basis though, the market grew 5.7% in 2021 with 1.35 billion smartphones shipped.

“There’s no question the second half of 2021 failed to meet expectations with volumes declining 4.5% compared to the second half of 2020,” said Ryan Reith, group vice president with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers. “As we mentioned last quarter, the supply chain and component shortages started to have meaningful impact on the smartphone market as we entered the second half of the year, and this continues to be the case as we’ve now entered 2022.

Despite a slight year-over-year decline in shipments, Apple, once again jumped above Samsung into the top spot in the fourth quarter, with the iPhone 13 taking a big portion of the volume in holiday quarter sales. Samsung and Xiaomi followed in the second and third spots respectively, but were also the only vendors out of the top 5 that grew shipments year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2021. OPPO and vivo round out the top 5. For the full year, all five companies grew shipments year-over-year with four out of five achieving double-digit growth. Xiaomi had the highest annual growth reaching almost 30%, Samsung had the lowest, just 6.0% growth in 2021 but still, again, number one in smartphone shipment share.

“The fact that 2021 would have come in drastically higher if it were not for the supply constraints adds even more positivity to the healthy 5.7% growth we saw for 2021,” said Nabila Popal, research director with IDC’s Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers. “To me it gives a message that there is significant pent-up demand in almost all regions. Even in China, where there are some challenges around weakening consumer demand, the market performed much better in the fourth quarter than expected, 5% better to be exact, albeit still a year-over-year decline. With channel inventory low in almost all regions and as supply constraints ease up towards the middle of the year, IDC expects this pent-up demand to drive the market toward healthy growth in 2022.”

Source: IDC