Samsung isn’t doing very well in China

Xiaomi’s ridiculous success in China has been discussed in length on this site as well as pretty much every other tech site out there, but the numbers are still impressive to look at. While beating out Apple to take China’s number one spot was a big feat, its the fall of Samsung that has drawn the most attention. Once the king of pretty much every smartphone market out there, Samsung has since fallen to fifth place in China following a really rough year. 

Xiaomi has taken the top spot in China’s smartphone market away from Samsung, says a new report by research firm IDC. Thanks to strong year-over-year growth in Q4 2014 smartphone shipments, Xiaomi achieved a market share of 12.5 percent in 2014, up significantly from 5.3 percent in 2013. Samsung’s share, meanwhile, dropped to 12.1 percent from 18.7 percent. The news isn’t too surprising if you follow research reports about China’s smartphone market. Xiaomi was dubbed China’s top smartphone vendor in August by Canalys and became the world’s third largest smartphone maker in Q3 2014, according to both IDC and Strategy Analytics. Still, the report underscores Samsung’s sharp reversal in fortune over the past year. In another worrying sign for its future in key emerging markets, Canalys said Micromax beat it as India’s top smartphone vendor by shipments for the first time in Q4 2014 (Samsung disputed that report, however, stating that it is still India’s top smartphone maker by actual retail sales instead of shipment volume).