IDC: Samsung continues leading the smartphone market with strong Galaxy S7 sales

Recent reports showed the Samsung Galaxy S7 outselling the Apple iPhone 6s, and today's IDC worldwide quarterly mobile phone tracker report confirmed Samsung continues to lead the smartphone market thanks to strong S7 sales.

As ZDNet's Jason Perlow clearly presented in his recent article, Apple and Samsung have some serious competition moving up in the smartphone marketshare ranks.

see also

10 reasons to buy the Samsung Galaxy S7

A nearly perfect smartphone?

Read now

The second quarter of 2016 was rather stagnant, with shipments up just 0.3 percent compared to last year. We did see growth of 3.1 percent from the first quarter to the second quarter, and with new phones launching soon, things should continue to improve in 2016.

Samsung remained the leader in worldwide smartphone shipments, with 77 million phones shipped in the second quarter. That gave Samsung 22.4 percent of the market at the end of the second quarter. It's easy to see why Samsung is experiencing such success with the fantastic Samsung Galaxy S7/S7 Edge. I use a lot of smartphones, and the Galaxy S7 Edge is nearly perfect.

Despite falling iPhone sales, Apple still shipped 40.4 million iPhones in the second quarter. That's impressive given that we have a new model likely coming in September. The lower-priced iPhone SE showed some success but has a lower average selling price.

Huawei remained in third place, with a 9.4-percent market share, catching up to Apple's 11.8-percent share. We see Apple down 2 percent, while Huawei went up 0.8 percent over the last year. Huawei is seeing great success with the P9 and Mate 8 but continues to show low penetration in the US. We may hear more about the US market strategy at the Honor event on August 16.

Oppo and Vivo round out the top five, with 6.6 percent and 4.8 percent market share, respectively. These Chinese manufacturers are primarily selling smartphones in China, the world's largest market for phones.