Telecom
Samsung, Huawei Lead Smartphone Shipments Decline for the Fourth Consecutive Quarter
The preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker shows that smartphone vendors shipped a total of 355.2 million units during the third quarter of 2018 (3Q18), resulting in a year-over-year decline of 6.0%.
This was the fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year declines for the global smartphone market, which raises questions about the market’s future.
IDC maintains its view that the market will return to growth in 2019, but at this stage it is too early to tell what that growth will look like.
While the overall smartphone market has declined for four straight quarters, two things stand out as major factors in the third quarter.
Samsung, the largest smartphone vendor in terms of market share, accounting for 20.3% of shipments in 3Q18, declined 13.4% year over year in the quarter.
And secondly, China, which is the largest country market for smartphone consumption, accounting for roughly one third of global shipments, was down as well for the sixth consecutive quarter.
Samsung had a challenging quarter with shipments down 13.4% to 72.2 million units shipped.
The market share leader continues to feel pressure from all directions, especially with Huawei inching closer to the top after its second consecutive quarter as the number two vendor.
In addition, growing markets like India and Indonesia, where Samsung has held leading positions for many years, are being changed by the rapid growth of Chinese brands like Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo.
Meanwhile, China’s domestic market, which represents roughly one third of all smartphones consumed, has been in decline since the second quarter of 2017, and 3Q18 was the sixth consecutive quarter where the market sees contraction.
China was down 11% in the first half of 2018 (1H18), and the challenges continued into 3Q18.
Overall IDC expects this decline to decelerate with the market returning to flat growth in 2019.
Ryan Reith, program vice president with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers, said “China’s domestic market continues to be challenged as overall consumer spending around smartphones has been down,”
“High penetration levels, mixed with some challenging economic times, has slowed the world’s largest smartphone market.
“Despite this, we believe this market will begin to recover in 2019 and beyond, driven in the short term by a large, built up refresh cycle across all segments, and in the outer years of the forecast supported by 5G migration.”
Anthony Scarsella, research manager with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, said “The race at the top of the market continues to be a heated one as Huawei once again slipped past Apple to the second position,”
“Although Huawei may have beat out Apple in Q3, the holiday quarter could have Apple as the market leader thanks to the launch of three new bezel-less devices.
“No matter who leads in the overall market the holiday quarter should be an exciting one with a wide selection of new flagship devices available.
“With the new iPhones, Mate 20, Pixel 3, V40, Note 9, and OnePlus 6T, we can expect consumers will have a plethora of options when upgrade time approaches.
“The vast selection of high-priced handsets should move ASPs in a positive direction come next quarter.”
Smartphone Company highlights shows that Samsung had a very challenging quarter with smartphone shipments down 13.4% from 3Q17, with overall volumes of 72.2 million.
While this was still enough to maintain the top market share position, the company does continue to lose share.
The launch of the Galaxy Note 9 was successful and the device continues to build in shipments.
However, Samsung’s bigger challenge is the ground they are losing at the mid-range and low-end.
Recent announcements of revamping the product portfolio to bring new features and awareness to non-flagship models could possibly help this slide.
Samsung will most likely look to new A-Series devices to fill the gaps left in the mid-tier across numerous markets.
Huawei landed in the number two position for the second straight quarter. While its share was down slightly from last quarter’s 15.9%, overall the company should be pleased with shipping 52.0 million handsets and grabbing 14.6% of the overall market.
From a product perspective, its P-series and recent update to its Mate-series are keeping it as competitive as ever at the top of the market.
And its Honor brand, which is primarily marketed toward a younger audience and online sales, has continued to do well in many markets.
Apple’s newest iPhones helped push third quarter shipments to 46.9 million units, up 0.5% from the 46.7 million units last year.
Apple once again launched three new devices at its Fall event, as the new 6.5-inch iPhone XS Max and 5.8-inch iPhone XS were joined by the more affordable iPhone XR in the Apple line-up.
The new XS Max and XS continue off the success from last year’s iPhone X but bring a new screen size option with more power and increased performance to the table.
And Apple has once again improved the camera, upped the storage, and added a new faster processor via the A12 Bionic chip, which is the first 7-nanometer chip for Apple.
Older iPhones, such as the 6S, 7, and 8, all received price cuts late in the quarter, which will balance the iPhone portfolio across all price tiers for the holiday quarter.
The older SE and iPhone X from last year have been dropped from the Apple line-up. The fourth quarter will include shipments for the vastly popular iPhone XR, which have not been counted in IDC’s Q3 figures.
Xiaomi once again grew its share to a new company high capturing 9.7% of all smartphones shipped worldwide in 3Q18.
Xiaomi continues its global expansion with market share gains in countries where it has been growing it presence, including India and Indonesia, and making headway into European markets like Spain where it continues to cause disruption.
Its Redmi 5A, Redmi 5 Plus, and Redmi Note 5 have continued to do well, with the newer Redmi 6/A/Pro successors ramping up quickly.
OPPO like Samsung saw shipments decline year over year, although on a much smaller scale.
Despite that, OPPO remained the number 5 vendor in terms of market share with 29.9 million shipments in 3Q18, down 2.1% from a year ago.
Like a few of its competitors that continue to climb the smartphone ladder, OPPO is beginning to gain global attention for some of its newer flagship devices that have come with highly marketed launch events.
Designs on the Find X and R17 products are raising the bar for OPPO, and in return they are continuing to see their user ASPs increase.
Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR) has named the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) among the top three Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the Federal Government with the Best Ranking in Website Performance for 2025.
L-R: Head Special Projects, Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), Salamatu Andu; Executive Commissioner, Technical Services, Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), Engr. Abaraham Oshadame; Director General Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), Head Customer Support Service, Galaxy Backbone, Rosemary Ehize; Secretary to the ES. Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, Tahir Aminu at the BPSR award ceremony for top four MDAs in BPSR Website Performance and Ranking 2025 at the BPSR office on Tuesday, 23rd December, 2025.
This is coming barely three weeks after the telecom regulator was recognized as one of the top five best-performing Federal Government agencies for 2025 by the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) – a testament to the Commission’s consistency in investment in technology for ensuring efficient service delivery.
In the BPSR 2024/2025 scorecard ranking of agencies’ websites, the NCC came second in the ranking, trailing behind Galaxy Backbone Limited, which came first while the Nigeria Export Promotion Council (NEPC) clinched the third position, from a pool of 235 MDAs, whose website were evaluated.
BPSR deployed 14 evaluation criteria in include MDA’s website compliance with .gov.ng domain name, appearance and aesthetics (look and feel) of the website, content, relevance to MDAs mandate/government policy and the website’ structure.
Others include website’s responsiveness (device compatibility), security, load time, usability/ease of navigation, availability/uptime, functionality, interactivity, accessibility and capacity building.
The recognition was announced at the official release of Federal Government 2024/2025 Scorecard Ranking for MDAs’ Website held at the Federal Ministry of Finance Auditorium in Abuja on Monday (December 22, 2025) while the award presentation took place at BPSR’s Office on Tuesday (December 23, 2025).
The award, which is an important index metric of the National e-Government Masterplan for determining the Nigeria e-Government Status, was received by the Commission in recognition of its commitment to maintaining a world-class website that enhances service delivery to the citizens.
Receiving the award on behalf of the Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Dr. Aminu Maida, the NCC’s Executive Commissioner, Technical Services, Abraham Oshadami, appreciated the BPSR for the recognition, describing the award as “another encouragement for the Commission to be a better public service institution leveraging digital platforms such as our web presence to enhance public service delivery to our various stakeholders, thereby implementing the Federal Government’s Ease of Doing Business policy direction.”
While presenting the award to the NCC, alongside other two agencies, BPSR’s Director-General, Mr. Dasuki Arabi, commended the top three for their proactive decisions in maintaining world-class websites, which are compliant with the Federal Government’s policy direction in effective and efficient service delivery to the citizens.
According to the DG, the 2024/2025 MDA’s websites’ ranking represents a collective effort of federal public institutions in Nigeria to be transparent, accountable and open in governance, as well as a confirmation to align with global best practices in service delivery to the citizens.
Developed about six years ago, Arabi said as a result of the annual ranking, more public institutions have indicated readiness to embrace reforms, and align with the policy direction of the current administration’s Renewed Hope agenda on improve governance for effective service delivery, as introduced by His Excellency President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
“The ideals of harnessing and deploying technological tools for service delivery has become imperative following the COVID pandemic, and distortions of socio-economic system of nations, culminating in the evolution of competitiveness, cost effectiveness, and agile governance.
“As engine room of governance, it behoves on us in the public service to perform our statutory duties and we must put in place technological innovations and standardized websites to operate services as well as deliver service needs to citizens,” he said.
The Scorecard exercise, he said, is part of the BPSR reform broader function of conducting research on reform implementation efforts and presenting ‘best practice’ models to the entire Public Service, and to among others, improve access to government information, facilitate seamless financial transaction, eliminate corruption and cyber theft, as well as facilitate access to government services.
Speaking on the rigorous nature of the exercise that produced the top three winners, the DG said “in the past few weeks members of the Scorecard Jury drawn from inter-Ministerial Agencies, had worked tirelessly to mill websites of selected MDAs through a rigorous process of enduring criteria for the ranking and the outcome had also passed through a quality assurance mechanism to validate the outcome.”
Taiwo Oyedele, Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, has dismissed reports that bank accounts not linked to a Tax Identification Number (TIN) will be frozen or automatically debited from January 1, 2026.
Taiwo Oyedele
Oyedele described the claims as false and misleading, warning Nigerians against panic over misinformation surrounding recent tax and financial reforms.
In a post on his X handle Tuesday morning, he wrote: “Don’t let anyone manipulate you. Your bank account is safe. Misinformation makes you panic and fear a reform that is designed to help you.
“When they tell you that your account will be frozen or automatically debited from January 2026, ask them for the evidence in the new law. Be wise.”
He stressed that no provision in the new tax laws authorises the freezing of bank accounts, adding that the rumours are part of widespread misrepresentation of the reforms.
The committee chairman reiterated that the reforms are intended to simplify Nigeria’s tax system and ease the burden on ordinary citizens, not to impose punitive measures on bank customers.
US tech giant, Amazon has disclosed that it blocked more than 1,800 North Koreans from applying for jobs, amid growing concerns that Pyongyang is deploying large numbers of IT workers overseas to earn and launder funds.
Amazon
In a LinkedIn post, Amazon’s Chief Security Officer, Stephen Schmidt, said North Korean nationals have been attempting to secure remote IT roles with companies around the world, particularly in the United States.
He noted that the company recorded nearly a one-third increase in such applications over the past year.
According to Schmidt, many of the applicants operate through so-called “laptop farms” — computers physically located in the US but remotely controlled from abroad.
He warned that the issue is not unique to Amazon and is likely occurring at scale across the tech industry.
He added that common red flags include incorrectly formatted phone numbers and questionable academic credentials.
The issue has previously drawn the attention of US authorities. In July, a woman in Arizona was sentenced to more than eight years in prison for running a laptop farm that helped North Korean IT workers obtain remote jobs at more than 300 US companies.
Officials said the scheme generated over $17 million in revenue for both the woman and North Korea.
Last year, South Korea’s intelligence agency also warned that North Korean operatives were using LinkedIn to pose as recruiters, approaching South Koreans working at defence companies in an attempt to steal sensitive technological information.
“North Korea is actively training cyber personnel and infiltrating key locations worldwide,” Hong Min, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told AFP.
He added that, given Amazon’s business model, the motivation behind such operations is largely economic, with a high likelihood of attempts to steal financial assets.
North Korea’s cyber warfare programme dates back to at least the mid-1990s and has since expanded into a cyber unit of about 6,000 personnel known as Bureau 121, according to a 2020 US military report.
In November, Washington announced sanctions against eight individuals accused of being state-sponsored hackers, alleging their illicit activities were carried out to fund North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.
The US Treasury has also accused North Korea-linked cybercriminals of stealing more than $3 billion over the past three years, primarily through cryptocurrency-related crimes.
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