Experts of the research company IC Insights decided to analyze the ratings of leading smartphone manufacturers over the past couple of years and found that 7 out of 10 and 10 of the 14 companies that make up the list of smartphone industry leaders in 2016 are in China. In the list there was only one company from the USA - Apple, two manufacturers of South Korea - Samsung and LG, and also one company from Taiwan - ASUS.

Specialists note that Samsung and Apple have begun to dominate the market since 2014. In 2015, the two companies jointly released about 555 million smartphones, or almost 40% of the global volume. However, in 2016, the leadership of the giants was somewhat shaken. The total volume of delivered smartphones fell to 526 million units, and the joint market share fell to 35%.

While the entire smartphone market grew by 4% in 2016, Samsung registered a fall of the same magnitude, while Apple's decline reached 7%.

Although Samsung and Apple retain strong positions in the segment of high-end devices with a price of more than $ 200, it seems that in general, the companies are weakening under the pressure of Chinese manufacturers Huawei, Oppo and Vivo, conclude in IC Insights.

The tendency is noted in the companies themselves. So, Huawei, which is today the third largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world, repeatedly publicly announced its intention in the coming years to beat Apple in the supply of communicators.

A comparison of the results of 14 companies from the 2016 rating showed that half of them demonstrated negative dynamics. In addition to the already mentioned Samsung and Apple, the decrease in the supply of smartphones was observed in LG, Lenovo, Xiaomi, TCL and LeEco / Coolpad.

At the same time, five companies improved their performance by 25% or more, while four Chinese manufacturers - Vivo, Oppo, Gionee, and Huawei - posted growth rates of over 30%. IC Insights noted that Oppo and Vivo, which became the fastest growing smartphone brands last year, increased shipments by almost 90%, belong to the same parent company - BBK Electronics.

Analysts also calculated that 10 Chinese companies from the list submitted in 2016 jointly delivered 587 million smartphones, which is 15% more compared to their shipments in 2015, which measured 511 million devices. As a result, Chinese vendors controlled 39% of the global communicator market. This is 3 percentage points more than the indicator for the previous year (36%), and as to the result of 2014, the growth of the market share of Chinese brands was 7%.