Chinese phone maker suffers plunge in shipments

Korean counterpart leads global count.

Korea's Samsung is at the top of International Data Corporation's (IDC) tracker of smartphone shipments globally, whilst third-ranked Xiaomi from China sees a significant drop in units shipped.

As per the preliminary table above, Xiaomi posted a 26.3% decline from the second quarter of 2025 to this year's Q2 in terms of worldwide shipments. Samsung, meanwhile, enjoyed an increase of more than 8%, accounting for nearly 63 million of over 277 million units shipped across the globe.

"The rankings for Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo remained unchanged from last quarter, but the pace of decline accelerated amongst Chinese vendors, with most large players falling by double digits YoY," noted IDC Worldwide Consumer Devices Associate Research Director Kiranjeet Kaur.

"The sub-$200 segment remains a critical volume driver for them, prompting many to repackage older models or fall back on 4G variants to defend this price band whilst managing other rising costs.

"Xiaomi once again posted the steepest decline amongst the top players as it deliberately trims low-end volume to preserve profitability and shifts focus towards higher price segments."
                    
Huawei, on the other hand, was cited for its 20.9% annual growth, which was partly attributed to steady pricing and a wider portfolio.    

As for the market leaders, Senior Research Director Nabila Popal had this to say: "For the second consecutive quarter, Apple and Samsung showed resilience as the only two vendors in the Top 5 posting growth. Apple achieved record high Q2 shipments driven by momentum for the iPhone 17 and fear of upcoming price hikes, keeping Apple on track for a record 22% annual share this year.

"Low-end vendors are doing their best to adjust strategy, cut costs, and shift their portfolios towards higher margin devices; however, the challenge isn't strategy – it's creating demand for these traditionally low-end brands at higher price segments."

The gap was blamed mainly on a so-called "memory crisis," which was said to be favouring the premium brands.

Worldwide Client Devices VP Francisco Jeronimo pointed out:  "This memory crisis has split the smartphone market in two. At the top, Apple and Samsung are pulling away, because they secured supply early and sell where memory is a smaller share of the bill of materials.

"At the bottom, the vendors exposed to cheap, high-volume devices are absorbing the pain and so are their customers."
     
According to Popal, memory costs now account for more than 65% of the bill of materials at the low end, having surged by almost 300% over a one-year period.