Lei Jun, founder and CEO of Xiaomi

An IDC report released yesterday, October 29, reports a 25.2% growth from Q3 2013 in the amount of smartphones shipped. This year’s third quarter figure is 327.6 million; a rise of 8.7% from the previous quarter’s 301.3 million.

The big news out of the results comes from Xiaomi, who posted a year-over-year change of 211.3%. They ended the quarter on 17.3 million units shipped, which increased from 5.6 million in 2013. Their market share has increased from 2.1% in Q3 of 2013, to 5.3% this year and sees them ranked as the 3^rd largest phone manufacturer.

Despite declining sales in this quarter, Samsung still tops the pile with 78.1 million units shipped, which gives them a 23.8% market share. This figure of 78.1 million is an 8.5% decrease from the same time last year, when they shipped 85 million units.

Apple followed Samsung in second position with its largest third-quarter volume with sales of 39.3 million units, an increase of 16.1% from the previous year.

Lenovo and LG tied for fourth place, bringing in sales of 16.9 million and 16.8 million smartphones shipped respectively. The figures remain unchanged from 2013; however, both companies have increased their market share by 5%.

Huawei, who was previously in third spot, has been kicked out of the top five completely.

“Despite rumors of a slowing market, smartphone shipments continue to see record-setting volumes,” said IDC program director Ryan Reith. “We’ve finally reached a point where most developed markets are experiencing single-digit growth while emerging markets are still growing at more than 30% collectively. In these markets, smartphone price points are making mobile computing possible where we once expected feature phones to remain dominant. This is great news for overall volumes, but the challenge has now become how to make money on devices that are quickly becoming commodity products. Outside of Apple, many are struggling to do this.”

With Android 5.0 Lollipop due to start shipping on November 3, it will be interesting to see what impact the Android device manufacturers will have in the Q4 results.

main image credit: theglobalpanorama via photopin cc