Smartphone shipments up 1% year-on-year despite Galaxy Note 7 recall

Global smartphone shipments are up 1% in Q3 2016 based on the same period last year, says the research firm International Data Corporation (IDC).

Preliminary results suggest that vendors shipped a total of 362.9 million smartphone units in Q3 2016 compared to 359.3 million units in Q3 2015, claims IDC, with sequential shipments up 5.3% from the 344.7 million units shipped in Q2 2016.

Meanwhile, the top smartphone vendors remain unchanged from last quarter; see the results of the big five in the table below.

HTC, LG and Samsung have all recently posted their Q3 results for 2016. HTCis running a roughly US$63.30 million operating loss, but is nevertheless 31.35% up on the same time last year, helped by its Vive VR headset and HTC 10 (despite the latter not selling incredibly well.)

Samsung’s mobile division saw an unsurprising 95 percent drop in its operating profit compared to the same period last year, largely the result of it cancelling its Galaxy Note 7 phablet.

HUAWEI shipped 23% more units than in Q3 2015, thanks to strong sales of its P9 flagship and its sub-brand Honor’s V8 success. As the third biggest manufacturer in the world, growth here carried a lot of weight in terms of global smartphone shipments and, combined with OPPO’s and vivo’s hefty figures, made up for Samsung and Apple’s shortfall (seen in the diagram above).

As for LG Mobile, the Korean company posted its worst quarterly loss ever. Its sales dropped 23 percent compared to the same time last year, resulting in a record-breaking $389.4 million loss. The poor performance of its LG G5 was likely the culprit there, despite it being praised by critics.

What are your thoughts on the numbers? Let us know in the comments.