Samsung ships 450 million smartphones, more than Nokia and Apple combined

Nokia sees market share fall as competition in emerging markets grows

Samsung's dominance of the mobile market has been underlined by new figures that show the company shipped more devices in 2013 than Apple and Nokia combined.

Data from research house Strategy Analytics reported that Samsung shipped a total of 451.7 million devices in 2013, up from 396.5 million in 2012.

The final quarter of the year saw total shipments of 118 million for Samsung, up on the 108 million shipped in Q4 2012. Strategy Analytics said given Samsung's strong growth, it could ship over half a billion phones in 2014.

Samsung's growth helped it achieve a 27.2 percent market share in 2013, up 2.1 percent on 2012. This left it the clear market leader, with Nokia in second place seeing its market share slump from 21.2 percent in 2012 to 15.2 percent in 2013.

Shipments for the Finnish firm fell from 335.6 million in 2012 to 252.4 million. Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics, said Nokia's decline was due to increasing competition in several markets.

"Nokia faced tough competition from Samsung in developing markets like India, while LG and others ramped up the pressure in developed regions such as Western Europe," he said.

"Nokia's Windows Phones have been performing relatively well, but this was not enough to offset sluggish demand for its Asha models and other feature phones during the course of the year."

Apple was one of those to benefit from Nokia's decline, with its market share rising from 8.6 percent to 9.2 percent as shipments rose from 135.8 million to 153.4 million between 2012 and 2013.

The final two places in the top five were taken by LG and TCL-Alcatel, with 4.3 and 3.1 percent of the market respectively. The rest of the market was covered by ‘others' which together made up the largest market share, at 40.9 percent.

Mawston told V3 this includes over 200 brands competing in many emerging regions, and although they are finding success in their home markets, such vendors will find it tough to compete on the global stage.

"Most of the fastest-growing global brands among the tier-two players are Chinese or Indian, such as Xiaomi, Coolpad, Meizu and Micromax. They have access to huge pools of demand in their home countries and they're using that strength to expand abroad," he said.

"The worldwide smartphone market is getting very crowded and competitive and only the leanest players with the best products and deepest distribution will thrive this year."