Summarizing the landscape in Q4 2014 below:
- Global mobile phone shipments crossed more than half a billion units for the first time ever growing a very healthy 12% annually, ending the year 2014 with more than 1.8 billion mobile phone shipments
- LTE was the fastest growing segment as the total demand more than doubled compared to last year and crossing 180 million units in a quarter for the first time ever.
- LTE shipment volumes has surpassed 2G GSM/GPRS/EDGE and 3G UMTS/WCDMA/HSPA to become the world’s leading cellular interface technology
- Apple dominated the high-value LTE segment with a 34% share in Q4 2014 due to solid demand for its newly launched iPhone 6 & 6 Plus models
- Apple & Samsung together captured 53% of the global LTE segment volumes down from 76% in Q4 2013 as Chinese brands took share away from incumbents (mostly Samsung) in the high growth China LTE market
- Huawei was the third largest LTE mobile phone supplier during the quarter for the first time ahead of Lenovo and LG
- China surpassed USA to become the top LTE market contributing to almost a quarter of the global LTE shipments
- TD-SCDMA segment continued to shrink as most of the Chinese OEMs (Huawei, Xiaomi and Lenovo) have upgraded portfolio to LTE smartphones
- In 3G UMTS/WCDMA segment, Samsung dominated in Q4 2014 with 22% share followed by Nokia, Alcatel One Touch and others