Apple's Q3 2014 Smartphone Sales Grow, Samsung Takes a Plunge

Apple has significantly gained a good lead in the smartphone market for this year's third quarter after releasing their newest iPhone devices this year in the United States.

Meanwhile, its main competitor Samsung Electronics reportedly experienced more than a few struggles especially with increasingly popular Chinese manufacturers making a name for themselves, as reported by Gartner in its market share report for the third quarter of 2014.

With record sales in new markets along with the highly anticipated launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus handsets, the total smartphone sales among end users greatly increased by 20.3 percent, which is equal to 301 million units sold in the third quarter alone.

However, despite the growth in the overall market, Samsung's smartphone sales took a plunge and dropped by roughly 7.7 percent after selling just 73.2 million units for Q3. Such occurrence has been attributed to the release of the Galaxy S5, which underperformed and did not widely appeal to Samsung buyers.

Meanwhile, the release of the Galaxy Note 4 Edge has stirred quite a buzz with its use of premium materials, clearly reaching out to high-end users.

Overall, Samsung remained as the largest vendor with a 24.4 percent market share while Apple followed in second place with 12.7 percent share. Thanks to the iPhone 6 models, these two popular devices significantly boosted market growth by approximately 19 percent during the third quarter.

Huawei placed as the third largest vendor followed by Xiaomi and Lenovo, respectively. Xiaomi had the largest growth in the Q3 as it led the market in China. These three Chinese manufacturers continue to seek growth and place emphasis on selling a larger number of smartphones within and outside of the local market.

While Xiaomi is looking on to expand in Indonesia and India, Lenovo has already made its plans clear by acquiring Google's Motorola Mobility. Such companies have been associated with well-designed yet affordable smartphones with LTE connectivity. Such devices are expected to achieve continuous growth in the near future.

In addition, the public is also looking forward to these manufacturers developing LTE smartphones with HD displays that will come with a price tag of less than $200.

With smartphones comprising 66 percent of the overall mobile phone market, Gartner projected that 90 percent of all phones will be smartphones in 2018.