Gartner: Apple loses second place in smartphone market to OnePlus parent company

Apple has lost its second place in the smartphone market to BBK, the parent company of brands such as Oppo, Vivo and OnePlus. This can be concluded from figures from analyst firm Gartner. Samsung has lost a lot, but remains by far the market leader.

Gartner separates BBK and Oppo, but both are part of the same group led by parent company BBK. Together, according to Gartner, the two companies sold around 44.8 million smartphones in the past quarter, slightly more than the 43 million iPhones that Apple has sold off. It is the first time that the BBK brands together have achieved higher sales than Apple, which had been in second place in the smartphone market for years.

Samsung has seen its sales fall, according to Gartner partly due to the fiasco with the Galaxy Note 7, which had to contend with exploding batteries. As a result, Samsung first recalled the device and then canceled the entire smartphone. Samsung’s figures are estimates, because the manufacturer does not report them.

The total number of smartphones sold increased by just over 5 percent from the same period last year, the analyst firm says. This means that there is still growth in the market for smart mobile phones, which has been on the rise since its inception around fifteen years ago. This year, around 1.5 billion smartphones will be sold.