Numbers confirm strong growth for two former smartphone leaders

The other day we passed along the top five smartphone manufacturers worldwide based on Q3 shipment data culled by IDC. Samsung shipped 80.4 million units during the quarter giving it a huge lead over number two Huawei (51.9 million), number three Xiaomi (46.5 million), number four Apple (41.6 million), and number five Vivo (31.5 million). The IDC survey that was publicly released did not include phone producers after number five lumping the remaining companies into one group called “others.”

Today, Omdia released its third quarter smartphone shipping numbers. And while the order of the top five matches IDC’s results, Omdia includes the remaining firms in the top ten. This data will be of interest to fans of certain brands that might not make the top five, but do show up in the top ten. We’re looking at you Motorola and LG.

Motorola and LG were seventh and eighth respectively in global phone shipments during Q3

Omdia has Samsung shipping an industry leading 81.2 million phones giving it 23% of the smartphone market from July through September. The South Korean outfit had a 50% gain in deliveries from the previous quarter and a 4% year-over-year increase. Huawei was second with a 15% slice of the global smartphone pie. The company shipped 51.9 million units during the quarter despite an annual decline of 22.3%. Huawei’s international business has been negatively impacted by U.S. efforts to bury it. Xiaomi (44.5 million handsets shipped) and Apple (41.5 million iPhones shipped) were fourth and fifth respectively with both claiming a 12% market share. Xiaomi saw its third quarter shipments rise 54% sequentially. Vivo rounded out the top five after delivering 30 million phones during Q3 for 8% of the market. Apple was hurt by the COVID-19 based delay in releasing its new phones which pushed out their launch into the next quarter.

Oppo finished in sixth place having earned 8% of the market thanks to the 28 million phones it shipped during the three month period running through the end of September. Finishing in seventh-place for Q3, Realme earned a 4% share of the market by shipping 14.5 million phones; this works out to a whopping 249% hike from Q2 and a nice 43% annual increase over last year’s third quarter shipments.

Motorola delivered 10.5 million handsets for the third quarter, good enough for eighth place and allowing it to 3% of the global market. For the resurgent Motorola, deliveries of handsets rose 41% over the second quarter numbers. Also with 3% of the market during the three months from July through September was LG. The latter shipped 9.3 million handsets, up 38% from the previous quarter. And Tecno was 10th. For the period it shipped 6.7 million handsets giving the manufacturer 2% of the worldwide market.

Motorola helped kick off Androidmania with the launch of the DROID on November 6th, 2009. After a few years and a couple of mergers, the company lost its way. It soon started its comeback by producing well-received low-priced phones, working its way up to mid-range models. This year, the comeback was complete as the feature-rich flagship Motorola Edge+ 5G was released with a large 5000mAh battery and a much improved rear camera array. Motorola was also able to price the Edge+ competitively.

Overall, global smartphone shipments declined in the third quarter  .9% on an annual basis to 357.4 million units. Sequentially, deliveries of connected handsets rose 28% from the number shipped during the second quarter. The annual decline of less than 1% can be considered a pretty strong showing considering that a global pandemic has impacted economies around the planet.