South Korea's tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. saw its market share in the smartphone industry plunge in the second quarter from a year earlier, data showed Wednesday, dented by the rise of Chinese players vying with low-end models.
Samsung took up 25.2 percent of the global smartphone market in the April-June period, down 7.1 percentage points from the 32.3 percent posted last year, the data compiled by market researcher IDC Corp. showed. It shipped a combined 74.3 million units of smartphones in the second quarter, down 3.9 percent on-year, the data showed.
The fall compares to an expansion of the global smartphone market in the second quarter, from 240 million units a year earlier to 295.3 million units, according to IDC.
Over the cited period, U.S. Apple Inc. also saw its market share fall 1.1 percentage point to 11.9 percent, while its shipments rose 12.4 percent to 35.1 million units.
Contrary to the waning of traditional winners, Chinese players have made significant strides to catch up to bigger rivals, with Huawei expanding its sales to 20.3 million units in the second quarter, up 95.1 percent from a year earlier. Its market share came to 6.9 percent.
Lenovo also gained ground to take up 5.4 percent of the market in the April-June period, compared to the 4.7 percent it posted last year. It has sold 15.8 million units of smartphones, rising 38.7 percent on-year.
LG Electronics Inc., South Korea's smaller handset maker, suffered a 0.1 percentage point drop in its market presence over the cited period to 4.9 percent.
Samsung Electronics, which released its earnings guidance earlier this month, said it expects a weakened performance for the second quarter as its mainstay smartphone business suffered a slowdown.
The rising competition with Chinese rivals, the market's weak responses to the flagship Galaxy S5 and the rising local currency have been cited as some of the major drags on Samsung's mobile business. Samsung will announce its final earnings reports Thursday. (Yonhap)
