Samsung Electronics Co. has leapfrogged Apple Inc. to take third place in the global mobile application processor (AP) market last year, a report by Counterpoint Research (via Yonhap News Agency) has said. Qualcomm retained its top spot, while MediaTek remained in the second position. Huawei finished fifth on the list.
Samsung, which makes Exynos chipsets, had a 14.1 per cent share of the global mobile AP market in 2019, which is an increase of 2.2 percentage points from a year earlier, the report said. Apple, which makes A-Series chipsets, took the fourth spot after its market share declined by 0.5 percentage point to 13.1 per cent last year.
Qualcomm took the lion’s share, that is, 33.4 per cent in the mobile AP market, and MediaTek had 24.6 per cent share, according to Counterpoint Research. Of the top five, only Samsung and Huawei, which makes Kirin chipsets, posted year-over-year growth. The market research firm said that Samsung's market share expanded due to growth in North America and India.
Samsung has been selling Exynos chipset-powered phones in India (Galaxy M series, Galaxy S series, Galaxy A series and Galaxy Note series) as well as in the US (Galaxy A series). In fact, three out of top 10 smartphone models of 2019 globally belonged to the Samsung Galaxy A series. In the fourth quarter of 2019, Samsung grew at 8.4 per cent year-over-year, capturing over one-fifth of the global smartphone market due to strong Note 10 and Galaxy A series sales.
