Chinese smartphone makers emerged as winners in the first quarter of 2016, effectively grabbing market share away from Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics, whose sales declined in the period, Gartner data show.  

Huawei Technologies saw its market share jumped to 8.4% in the quarter from 5.4% a year earlier, while Oppo Electronics share more than doubled to 4.6% in the period. Together with peer Xiaomi, the top three Chinese smartphone makers corner a combined 17% global market share dwarfing that of Apple at 14.8%, down from 17.9% a year ago. Samsung slips to 23.2% in the quarter from 24.1% a year earlier.  

Global sales of smartphones to end users totaled 349 million units in the first quarter of 2016, a 3.9% increase over the same period in 2015, according to Gartner, Inc. Smartphone sales represented 78% of total mobile phone sales in the first quarter of 2016.

Smartphone sales were driven by demand for low-cost smartphones in emerging markets and for affordable 4G smartphones, led by 4G connectivity promotion plans from communications service providers (CSPs) in many markets worldwide.

"In a slowing smartphone market where large vendors are experiencing growth saturation, emerging brands are disrupting existing brands' long-standing business models to increase their share," says Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner.

"With such changing smartphone market dynamics, Chinese brands are emerging as the new top global brands. Two Chinese brands ranked within the top five worldwide smartphone vendors in the first quarter of 2015, and represented 11% of the market. In the first quarter of 2016, there were Oppo had the best performance in the quarter, moving into the No. 4 position with unit sales growth of 145%. Like Huawei and Xiaomi, Oppo saw strong growth in China, taking share from players such as Lenovo, Samsung and Yulong. Huawei saw strong smartphone demand in Europe, the Americas and Africa, while Xiaomi and Oppo saw their smartphone sales in emerging Asia/Pacific rise by 20% and 199%, respectively," says Gupta.

Lenovo disappeared from the top five smartphone vendor ranking as well as the top 10 mobile phone vendor market in the first quarter of 2016. "Lenovo had another challenging quarter with its worldwide smartphone sales declining 33%," says Gupta. "Its smartphone sales fell by 75% in Greater China, where it faced strong competition from local brands. Lenovo is also struggling to bring synergies with Motorola's device business, managing lower costs and overheads of the two brands."