Apple’s global market share of mobile phones grows 6.6% year-on-year, Samsung up 22.9%

Apple's share of the global mobile phone market grew by just 6.6 percent in the past year, from 35.1m to 37.4m units, according to new data from the IDC Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker. This is the first time its growth has been in single digits since 2009.

Apple's worldwide market share is now 8.9%, behind Samsung at 27.5 percent and Nokia at 14.8 percent. Apple is the market leader in the USA, with a 35 percent market share, but worldwide competes with both low-cost smartphones and featurephones. Apple is rumored to be working on its own low-cost iPhone to compete in the sub-premium market.

Interestingly, smartphones overtook featurephones worldwide for the very first time, grabbing 51.6% of the market.

iPhone 5 LCD faces off with Samsung Galaxy S4 OLED, declared a tie by display expert

Photo: Tagscape.com

Detailed tests of the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S4 screens by display calibration and testing specialist DisplayMate has declared the result a draw.

The detailed test results cover color gamut and accuracy, brightness, power efficiency and performance in high ambient lighting. DisplayMate compared the S4′s OLED screen to the LCD screen of the iPhone 5, highlighting the strengths & weaknesses of each and overall declaring it a tie.

The iPhone 5 is now more than half way through its product cycle, which is important to keep in mind for our comparison. However, high-end LCDs like the iPhone 5 are a very mature and refined display technology, so other than screen size, resolution, and the Pixels Per Inch not much is likely to change in the next generation, no matter what Apple decides to do. The iPhone 5 is significantly brighter than the Galaxy S4, particularly for screens with mostly peak white backgrounds. Its color calibration is a bit better, although the Galaxy S4 has a more accurate White. The Galaxy S4 has a much bigger screen, higher resolution, higher PPI, much darker blacks, and better screen uniformity than the iPhone 5. They each have their own particular strengths and weaknesses, but if you scan our color coordinated Comparison Table, both displays are quite good and comparable overall – so it's currently a tie.