Apple Could Be Just Months Away From Dethroning Samsung In The Global Smartphone Market?

Earlier this week, worldwide shipment data compiled by International Data Corporation (IDC) showed that Samsung is continuing with its domination over the global smartphone market by retaining the numero uno position.

However, the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker report also claimed that Samsung could soon be dethroned from the top position by Apple which came second in the list.

It turns out, the Cupertino-based fruit-themed company is rapidly closing in on Samsung in terms of market share.

The South Korean heavyweight's global market share dropped steadily to 21.2 percent in Q4 2015 from 22.7 percent in the year-ago quarter. 

Compared to that, Apple nailed a rather impressive gain of 1.5 percent to capture 18.7 percent of the global smartphone market.

In terms of actual shipment figures, Samsung shipped 93.3 million more devices than Apple last year. 

That's a steady drop from the massive lead of 125.5 million it imposed on the arch rival in 2014.

However, another report released by market research firm Strategy Analytics depicts a diametrically opposite scenario by claiming that Samsung had widened the gap with its closest competitor Apple during Q4 2015.

The report claims that Samsung shipped 81.3 million smartphones across the world in Q4 2015, growing at an above-average nine percent per years from 74.5 million units in Q4 2014. Incidentally, this happened to be the fastest growth registered by the company in the last two years.

Samsung's market share in Q4 2015 increased to 20.1 per cent from 19.6 per cent in the year-ago period. Compared to that, Apple's market shares during the same quarter dropped to 18.5 percent as compared to 19.6 percent in Q4 2014.

When it comes to the annual performance of both Samsung and Apple, the latter seemed to have done a better a job by increasing its market share to 16.1 percent in 2015 from 15.6 percent in 2014.

 Samsung's market share in 2015 dropped to 22.2 per cent from 24.7 per cent in the previous year.

"Global smartphone shipments grew just 6 percent annually from 380.1 million units in Q4 2014 to 404.5 million in Q4 2015," depicting a disappointing growth rate for the worldwide smartphone market, the Strategy Analytics report read. "This quarter was the smartphone industry's slowest growth rate of all time."