Mobile phone shipments reached 459.5 million units globally during the third quarter of 2014, representing a 7.6 per cent year-on-year growth. However, this was down on the 9.4 per cent growth seen in the same quarter a year ago.

Strategy Analytics, which published the data, attributed much of the overall growth in the market to healthy demand for 3G and 4G devices in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Samsung remained the leading player but its shipments fell 15 per cent on a year-on-year basis, to 101.7 million, giving it a 22.1 per cent market share. This compares to a 28.1 per cent share a year ago.

Executive director at Strategy Analytics, Neil Mawston, noted that the South Korean vendor’s growth rate has slowed due to “tougher competition” from Chinese vendors. Despite this, Samsung is still shipping more mobile phones than Apple and Nokia combined and “maintains a good product portfolio”.

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Nokia shipped 52.2 million mobile phones during the period, which was good enough to give it an 11.4 per cent market share. However, this was significantly down on the 64.6 million shipments and 15.1 per cent market shared a year ago.

Now owned by Microsoft, Mawston said the company “continues to face intense rivalry from Apple and dozens of Android vendors across all price bands”.

Apple took the number three spot, with 39.3 million iPhones shipped, up from 33.8 million a year previously. This gave the company an 8.6 per cent market share, up from 7.9 per cent.

However, Strategy Analytics director Ken Hyers noted that the company’s growth rate has almost halved from 26 per cent in Q3 2013 to 16 per cent in the most recent period. “Apple is finding it harder to achieve growth this year, despite a successful recent launch of the new iPhone 6 portfolio,” he noted.

LG secured a 4.7 per cent market share, its highest share since 2011, with 21.8 million shipments. Hyers said that the company performed well in the US and Europe but that China and India “remain major weak spots”.

Emerging Chinese vendor Xiaomi shipped 18 million phones to secure a 3.9 per cent market share and claim fifth spot in terms of shipments. It shipped just 5.2 million mobile phones a year ago, when its market share was 1.2 per cent.

The vast majority of the company’s shipments were in its home country, where it has a strong brand and retail presence.

Strategy Analytics identified a number of second-tier brands that could challenge the top five vendors globally, including TCL-Alcatel, Oppo, Vivo and Lenovo.

Smartphones accounted for 320 million or 70 per cent of mobile phone shipments during the period, representing a 27 per cent year-on-year growth.

Strategy Analytics director Linda Sui noted that there was healthy demand for smartphones in Asia and Africa, but “sluggish volumes” in North America and Europe, due to changes in the level of subsidies offered by operators.

Xiaomi performed particularly strongly in the segment, to capture a record 5.6 per cent market share, giving it the number three spot globally.

Samsung also led the way in smartphones, with 79.2 million shipments, and a 24.7 per cent market share. This was down from 88.4 million shipments and a 35.0 per cent market share a year ago, as competition at all segments had an impact.

Apple secured a 12.3 per cent share of the smartphone market. Mawston said the company’s growth has slowed due to its limited presence in the fast-growing entry-level segment.

LG, meanwhile, shipped 16.8 million smartphones to put it in fourth place with a 5.2 per cent market share. Huawei’s 16.5 million smartphone shipments gave it fifth place in the smartphone rankings, largely driven by its strength in emerging markets such as Africa, China and Latin America.