North American smartphone market dipped by 19 percent last quarter

Apple and Samsung remain the biggest two players in the North American smartphone market, despite an overall decline in sales of around 19 percent according to the latest data from Canalys. This compares with a global downturn of just 6.6 percent by comparison suggesting that the North American market is doing it up to three times as tough as other markets globally. However, while Apple’s global sales plummeted a precipitous 30 percent, this was limited to a 19 percent slide in local sales in line with the overall market decline.

Apple managed to hold its market share of the North American market relatively steady at 40 percent, which was only down .3 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago. However, unit sales were down by just over 3 million at 14.6 million iPhones sold for the quarter compared to 17.9 million for the same period last year. Samsung somehow managed to buck the downwards trend with an increase in sales of 3 percent. This pushed it to 10.7 million unit sales, up from 10.3 million.

The other remaining players in the top five North American vendors include LG, Lenovo (Motorola) and TCL. LG went backwards by 24 percent, but still had a strong hold on the third position with 4.8 million sales which is still well below the top two. Lenovo’s Motorola managed to record a 42 percent increase in sales, although this only took it to 2.4 million devices sold for the quarter. Chinese smartphone maker TCL (and Blackberry licensee) rounded out the top five with 1.4 million sales and a 4 percent share of the North American market.