Samsung beats Apple in Q4 smartphone shipment

Samsung Electronics Co. emerged as the sole leader in the global smartphone market in the fourth quarter of last year, beating its archrival Apple Inc., data showed Thursday.

The South Korean tech giant sold 81.3 million smartphones in the October-December period, up 6 million units from a year earlier, the data compiled by industry tracker Strategy Analytics showed. The figure translates into a market share of 20.1 percent.

Industry watchers said the increase is attributable to brisk shipments of budget smartphones, rather than the flagship Galaxy S6.

Apple sold 74.8 million units during the cited period, up 300,000 units, taking up 18.5 percent of the market.

In the fourth quarter of 2014, Samsung and Apple each sold 74.5 million units, marking the first time for the South Korean giant to lose the top spot which has been held on quarterly basis since the July-September period of 2011.

For all of 2015, Samsung sold 319 million smartphones, far outpacing Apple's 231 million units. Samsung and Apple took up 22.2 percentand 16.1 percent, respectively, of the global smartphone market last year.

China-based Huawei Technologies Co. sold 107 million smartphones last year to become the No. 3 player, followed by Lenovo and Xiaomi. (Yonhap)