Smartphone shipments are on the rise and Huawei is taking the lead

It’s that time of the year when analysts parade out market data for the midpoint of the year, so we can assess who the biggest winners and losers have been in the past twelve months. IDC, one of the big names in market data, has just released its comprehensive breakdown of how the smartphone market stands in Q2 2015. Starting with the big picture, it is good news for the mobile industry as a whole. Worldwide smartphone shipments have leapt by another 11.6 percent compared with the same time last year. Vendors have shipped a total of 337.2 million smartphones in the second quarter of 2015, compared with 302.1 million units in the same period of 2014. As you may have guessed, it is a combination of both high-end flagships and competitively priced smartphones that are continuing to drive consumer demand. Turning to the industry leader, Samsung, we actually see a stagnation in shipments from Q2 2014 to Q2 2014, despite apparently strong demand for its new Galaxy S6 smartphones. The issue for Samsung appears to be that it incorrectly estimated demand for its S6 Edge smartphone. Reports from Korea suggest that the company has been trying to fulfil consumer demand but also has a stock of regular Galaxy S6 handset that it can’t sell. Samsung will likely be pinning hope on the upcoming Galaxy Note 5 and S6 Edge Plus to drive sales higher later in the year.