Apple (AAPL) was the only top-five smartphone vendor to lose market share in the second quarter, research firm IDC reported Thursday.
Apple's iPhone shipments fell 15% year over year to 40.4 million units in Q2. But overall smartphone shipments barely budged, rising just 0.3% to 343.3 million units, IDC said. It was the second straight quarter without growth, IDC said.
The smartphone business is facing lengthening replacement cycles and a market slowdown in China, IDC analyst Ryan Reith said.
Apple in the June quarter posted its lowest quarterly handset volume in seven quarters, despite the mid-cycle release of the lower-cost iPhone SE.
South Korea-based Samsung remained the global smartphone leader in Q2 with 22.4% market share, up from 21.3% a year earlier. It shipped 77 million smartphones in Q2, up 5.5% thanks to the success of its Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge phones.
Apple was second with 11.8% smartphone market share, down from 13.9% in Q2 2015. Its new 4-inch iPhone SE proved successful in both emerging and developed markets, while demand slipped for its flagship iPhone 6S handsets.
The success of the cheaper SE drove down the average selling price for an iPhone by 10.1% to $595 from $662 a year ago.
IBD'S TAKE: Apple stock has an IBD Composite Rating of 23, putting it in the bottom quarter for stocks in key metrics over the last 12 months. For more information on Apple stock, visit the IBD Stock Checkup.
On Wednesday, Apple celebrated the fact that it recently shipped its 1 billionth iPhone. The original iPhone went on sale in June 2007.
Chinese vendors rounded out the top five. Huawei came in third with 9.4% market share, followed by OPPO (6.6%) and Vivo (4.8%).
In a sign that the smartphone market is consolidating among the top 5 vendors, all other smartphone manufacturers saw their unit shipments drop 10.8% in Q2.
Research firm Strategy Analytics came out with a competing Q2 smartphone report on Thursday. It estimates that worldwide smartphone sales rose 0.7% to 340 million units.
Its top-5 smartphone vendors are Samsung (22.8% market share), Apple (11.9%), Huawei (9.4%), OPPO (5.3%) and China's Xiaomi (4.3%).
"Smartphone growth has slowed due to increasing penetration maturity in major markets like China and uncertainty surrounding major political events such as the Brexit EU referendum result," Strategy Analytics analyst Linda Sui said in a statement. "However, there are emerging signs that the global smartphone market has reached a bottom in the first half of 2016, and the growth outlook for the second half of this year is improving due to multiple big new product launches from Samsung, Apple and others."
Samsung will announce its Galaxy Note 7 phablet on Aug. 2. Apple is expected to launch its iPhone 7 in September.
"With a new Galaxy Note 7 flagship model rumored to be on the way, Samsung will be able to strengthen its smartphone leadership in the second half of the year," Strategy Analytics analyst Neil Mawston said in a statement. "Apple continues to face iPhone fatigue among consumers and the new iPhone SE model has not been able to stem that trend."
Apple stock ended trading up 1.4% to 104.34 on the stock market today.
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