According to IDC, Samsung remained the largest seller of mobile phones in the Middle Eastern and African (MEA) markets in Q2 2014 by a significant margin, though its overall share of the market has declined by about 8 percent, to 44.9 percent. While this may be a cause for concern for Samsung, it remains far ahead of its competitors, with second-place Huawei holding 9.5 percent of the market.

Huawei may be in a position to celebrate as it has increased its share YoY from 2.6 percent of the market, leapfrogging Apple and Nokia, which are the third- and fourth- largest vendors, respectively. In addition, Huawei’s sales were largely smartphones in the low- to mid-price ranges.

This latter fact is important because while some nations, like the UAE, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia have smartphone penetration rates above 75 percent, many nations in the region have a lower smartphone install base. In countries like Nigeria and Kenya, the share of smartphones sold as compared to feature phones has doubled and indications are that this trend will continue. While more developed markets have more than 75 percent of all handset sales being smartphones, only 40 percent of all sales in the region as a whole were smartphones.

Feature phone manufacturers are therefore still finding some success in the market, with Nokia still being the top feature phone vendor with 35 percent of the market. Other feature phone brands of note include Techno, Samsung, and Qmobile, though in every case there has been a decline in share YoY.