IPhone Sales Fall For First Time: Gartner

(RTTNews) - Apple Inc. (AAPL) suffered its first decline in sales of smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2015, according to analyst and research firm Gartner Inc. Global sales of smartphones in the quarter also recorded their slowest growth rate since 2008.

Sales of iPhones were down 4.4 percent from the year-ago period to 71.53 million units. Apple's market share in the quarter was 17.7 percent, down from 20.4 percent in the prior-year period.

Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner said, "Low-cost smartphones in emerging markets, and strong demand for premium smartphones, continued to be the driving factors. An aggressive pricing from local and Chinese brands in the midrange and entry-level segments of emerging markets led to consumers upgrading more quickly to affordable smartphones."

Global sales of smartphones to end users in the fourth quarter of 2015 totaled 403.10 million units, up 9.7 percent from 367.33 million units in the year-ago period. However, this was the slowest growth rate since 2008.

Samsung and Huawei were the only two top-five smartphone vendors to increase their sales to end users in the quarter. Samsung's sales for the quarter rose 14 percent to 83.44 million units and Huawei's sales surged 53 percent to 32.12 million units. Huawei achieved its best performance year over year.

Gartner noted that despite being the number one vendor, Samsung faces challenges. The company needs to introduce new flagship smartphones that can compete with iPhones and stop the churn to iOS devices, the research firm said.

In 2015 as a whole, global smartphone sales grew 14.4 percent from the prior year to reach 1.4 billion units. Samsung maintained the top position in the year, but its market share declined by 2.2 percentage points.

Apple sold 225.9 million iPhones in the year, to achieve a market share of almost 16 percent. Huawei's smartphone sales approached 104 million units, up 53 percent year over year.