Samsung announced that their profits have dipped during October to December, though their semiconductor business has observed an impressive growth. But this growth has not been sufficient enough to cover up its mobile business problems.
Samsung has seen a significant decline in their mobile business in the most crucial Chinese market, which is the largest market for smartphones in the world. Due to the poor performance graph in China, the overall global share of their smartphone business has seen a decline in the last quarter of 2014. Last year Samsung’s performance has been largely affected by Apple as the Cupertino-based smartphone maker launched their large iPhones with bigger screens and showed a negative impact on Samsung’s Galaxy phones.
Samsung is already facing tough competition from Xiaomi as far as their low-end smartphones are concerned. In low-end smartphones it’s Huawei and Xiaomi and in larger phones it’s Apple why Samsung has lost their dominance in the smartphone market globally. Last year, in the second quarter, Xiaomi replaced Samsung as the biggest smartphone maker and now Samsung is the third one as Apple has topped the list.
In global smartphone sales it’s a tie between Apple and Samsung, and since 2011 it’s the first time that Samsung is not the leader in the market. While Apple’s iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were quite appreciated for their super sizes, Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S5 was slammed for its design. Now it’s a tie between Samsung and Apple as each of them shipped 74.5 million smartphones in the final quarter of 2014. For Samsung, it’s their semiconductor business which maintained the cash-flow into the company. In the current quarter, Samsung has introduced Galaxy Note Edge with a curved side display and during Spring they are expected to unveil an update to its flagship Galaxy S smartphone.
