Samsung smartphone shipments down 7.4% in Q3; outlook dim

Samsung Electronics Co. suffered a drop in smartphone shipments during the third quarter on weak demand, adding to concerns over the sector’s looming downturn, although the South Korean tech giant held the throne in the global market.

Samsung’s smartphone shipments fell 7.4% to 64.1 million units in the July-September period from a year earlier, according to industry research firm Omdia on Friday. The maker of Galaxy Android smartphones accounted for 21% of the global market in terms of sales volume, keeping the No. 1 position in the sector.

Global smartphone shipments declined 7.6% to 301.2 million units during the period on-year with those of all major Chinese players such as Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo down.

“Total smartphone shipments are also expected to drop in the fourth quarter,” said Jusy Hong, Omdia’s senior research manager for mobile devices. “For the full year, the shipments are likely to fall more than 8% compared to last year.”

Apple Inc., however, bucked the trend as its shipments rose 2.6% to 52.2 million units, making up 17% of the world’s market. That helped the iPhone maker, the world’s No. 2 player, narrow its market share gap with Samsung to 4 percentage points from 5 percentage points a year earlier.

Write to Ji-Eun Jeong at jeong@hankyung.com
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.