Apple’s Worldwide Smartphone Market Share Drops During the First Quarter of 2016

According to the analyst firm, companies shipped 334.9 million smartphones during the first quarter of 2016. That’s compared to 334.3 million devices shipped during the same time in 2015.

The top two vendors have remained the same – Samsung and Apple. Samsung shipped 81.9 million handsets during the quarter, good enough for 24.5 percent of the worldwide market. That is a small drop from the 82.4 million phones shipped during the same quarter in 2015.

While Apple remained in second place, both the company’s shipments and market share dropped during the quarter. Apple shipped 51.2 million handsets for 15.3 percent of the market. That’s a drop of 10 million devices and 3 percent of market share compared to the first quarter of 2015.

The rest of the top five was filled by companies with a large focus on China – Huawei, OPPO, and vivo.

The firm said the almost-flat growth in the smartphone market was attributable to a number of factors, including strong smartphone saturation in developed markets and a slow down in China.

While Apple’s numbers mirror the worldwide smartphone market in general, there are a few rays of hope. During Monday’s earning’s call, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that demand for the smaller and lower cost iPhone SE is outpacing supply, which is definitely good news for the company.

The next-generation iPhones are also scheduled to land sometime this fall and should help entice iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus users to make an upgrade.