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Smartphone sales stall at ~3.5 million per day

Huawei now a solid third in global sales race

Smartphone sales have just about stalled at the disappointing figure of about 3.5 million a day, each and every day of the year.

Analyst firms Canalys and IDC last week both released the results of spreadsheetery covering the year's second quarter, both finding sales ticked up a million or so compared to 2015's second quarter. IDC reckons 343.3m phones shipped in 90 days, Canalys settled on “over 330 million units”.

Both firms agree that Samsung is the market leader, with 77m or 80m shipments, plenty of which were the well-received Galaxy S7 (helped by bundles of the Gear VR headset). Next comes Apple at about 40m handsets shipped, another year on year decline that's held to show the iPhone SE isn't exactly setting the world on fire.

Huawei's now a fixture on the podium with both firms estimating its handset shipments landed somewhere just north of 30 million for the quarter. Fellow Chinese companies Oppo and vivo round out the top five, and do so despite not yet having turned their attention far from their home market, or neighbouring Asian nations.

“Others” still have about half the market, but with fifth place accounting for about 16 million shipments a quarter the chasing pack is nibbling at niches rather than shooting for mainstream success.

Both analysts see better days ahead, because Q2 is Apple's worst time of year and also a bit of a flat spot for big releases. With Samsung's next Note due in weeks, an iPhone refresh almost traditional for September and handset-makers wising up to the need for more tempting offers an upswing is expected in coming weeks. Next will come Christmas, which is always a good time to sell shinies with batteries. ®

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