For some time now, Samsung has enjoyed the spot as the world’s number one smartphone maker in terms of unit volume. As much as this is still the case, the company is slowly losing ground to its competitors, especially the rising Chinese brands. Samsung has been quite consistent, constantly churning out devices for almost all sectors of the market. From the low end to the most premium of devices, ranging from mobile phones to smart watches, Samsung has managed to be influential in most platforms and form factors.
Despite this, Samsung has slowly started to lose its grip on the number one spot, and it’s losing it mainly to upcoming companies such as Xiaomi. As much as this company may not ring a bell in many people’s ears, especially in African countries, it is actually a company that is coming up quite strongly. Indeed, the latest analysis shows that it posted the highest growth. It is worth noting that the higher percentage of the market held by Samsung is concentrated in Asian countries. Any entrant to that region significantly affects its grip of the market, and this is where Xiaomi comes into the picture. Xiaomi is mainly present in the Asian countries for now, hence driving Samsung’s devices to the edge.
Samsung still leads the pack in terms of the number of units shipped worldwide, but the slight drop is the first for the company since its rise to the top back in 2010. However, Google’s Android, the main platform for Samsung devices, is still the most popular mobile OS. Samsung has played a major role in Android’s dominance, but the discrepancy whereby Samsung loses market share while Android still enjoys a major percentage could be attributed to the fact that the Chinese companies that offer highest competition also have Android based devices.
Apart from Xiaomi, Huawei and Lenovo are also other companies that are enjoying a period of significant growth. These companies are mainly popular in the emerging markets. Additionally, their wide array of devices play a major role in assisting them steadily gain hold of the market.
From such an evaluation, we can only deduce that Samsung will most likely come up with a strategy to try and counter the forces pushing it towards the edge. This could be through offering quality devices at competitive prices, much like the strategy being used by Xiaomi and Huawei, or revolutionizing the industry with a major product. Whichever the strategy that they choose, it will most definitely be in the interest of consumers, so enthusiasts better sit tight and wait for a showdown.
