Samsung Electronics remains ahead of Apple as the world’s top smartphone maker, but is facing fiercer competition with the US tech giant surpassing it in sales in the US market in the latest quarter, reports showed Wednesday.

According to market researcher Strategy Analytics, Samsung maintained the first position with 21 percent of the global smartphone market share in the third quarter of this year, while Apple held steady at 12 percent share.

“Samsung shipped 83.4 million smartphones worldwide in (the third quarter of) 2017, rising an impressive 11 percent annually from 75.3 million in Q3 2016,” said Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics in a report. “This was Samsung’s fastest growth rate for almost four years. Samsung’s growth is being driven by strong demand for its A, J and S series models across Latin America, India and elsewhere.” 

The report showed Apple grew a below average 3 percent annually and shipped 46.7 million smartphones for 12 percent of the market share worldwide in Q3 2017.

“Despite a delayed launch of the flagship iPhone X model, the new iPhone 8 portfolio was relatively well received in major countries such as Germany and China,” Mawston said.

However, another report revealed that Samsung was beaten by Apple during the same period in the US market, the most important and largest market for the Korean company.

Samsung had kept the No.1 spot in the US market in the first and second quarters of this year.

Samsung shipped out a total of 9.9 million smartphones to the US, claiming a 25.1 percent share in the market, while Apple shipped 12 million iPhones for 30.4 percent market share.

Despite lower-than-expected sales of the latest iPhone 8 and delayed purchases in anticipation of iPhone X, Apple kept the top spot in its home turf.

“Since it is the home ground for Apple, the release of iPhone 8 was influential to the market share,” said a Samsung official. “However, it is encouraging to see Samsung’s share slightly grew from a year earlier.”

“Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S8 performed relatively well in the high-tier, while its A5 model and others are popular in the mid-tier,” the researcher said.

By Song Su-hyun (song@heraldcorp.com)