Samsung Electronics Co. retained the top spot in the global smartphone market in the third quarter of the year, a report showed Wednesday.

The world's largest smartphone maker held a market share of 20 percent in the July-September period, followed by Apple with 14 percent and Xiaomi with 13 percent, according to a report from market researcher Counterpoint Research.

During the three months, the South Korean tech giant shipped 69.3 million smartphones, up 20 percent from the previous quarter and down 14 percent from a year ago.

The number of countries where Samsung enjoyed the leading position, however, decreased to 43 from 46 two years ago.

The company led the smartphone markets in Europe, Latin America and Middle East-Africa, while the Chinese phone maker Vivo led the Asian market and Apple led the North American market.

The research company said Apple has avid followers in the United States and some European countries, while Xiaomi has been expanding its customer base aggressively in India and Motorola has taken up the vacant spot left by South Korea's LG Electronics, which withdrew from the smartphone market earlier this year.

Overall, the global smartphone market grew six percent from the previous quarter to 342 million units in total.

Lee Yoon-jung, an analyst at Counterpoint, said Samsung needs to continue pushing ahead with technological advances in the foldable phone market and beef up its 5G smartphone lineup in emerging markets. (Yonhap)