Apple may be seeing declining growth for iPhone shipments, but overall it looks like an awful lot of smartphones were shipped last year. According to a report from Strategy Analytics, the number hit 1.4 billion in 2015, representing the most smartphones ever shipped in a year.

On the other hand, Strategy Analytics also notes that shipments in the fourth quarter of 2015 were only up 6 percent from the same period a year earlier, which is the slowest growth rate to date… so maybe the market is saturated and sales will continue to drop as the number of people buying their first phone instead of a replacement for an existing one declines.

One thing is certain though: not a lot of those 1.4 billion smartphones that shipped in 2015 were Microsoft Lumia phones.

lumia 950 and 950 xl

Microsoft released its fourth quarter financial results, and the company notes that revenue from phones declined by 49 percent. In the last three months of the year. The company sold 4.5 million phones. A year earlier, the number was 10.5 million.

Sure, there are some companies that would probably be ecstatic if they could sell 4.5 million phones. But Microsoft is one of the only companies producing phones that run Windows software, and it seems like the market for those phones is drying up.

There was some good news in Microsoft’s report: revenue from the Surface line of tablets and notebooks was up 29 percent.

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,546 other subscribers