IDC: Smartphone shipments down 6.3% in Q4 2017, Apple overtakes Samsung for top spot

Apple is the new global smartphone king, surpassing rival Samsung, if only for one quarter. For those getting a big déjà vu, this is indeed a trend: Samsung dominates the first three quarters in the year, and Apple settles for the fourth.Smartphone vendors shipped a total of 430.7 million smartphones worldwide in Q4 2017, down 6.3 percent from the 403.5 million units in Q4 2016. Of the top five (Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, and Oppo), only one (Xiaomi) managed to ship more units