According to beancounters at Digitimes Research who added up the numbers and divided by their shoe-size there were 331.9 million smartphones shipped globally in the third quarter of 2015 which amounts to a 10.5 per cent increase on quarter and 7.7 since last year.

Nearly a quarter of the shipments cale from Samsung followed a long way by Apple with 14.5 per cent. Huawei made up 7.4 per cent of shipments followed by Lenovo on 4.8 per cent and LG Electronics on 4.5 per cent. Xiaomi  made up 3.8 per cent slightly ahead of  BBK on 3.5 per cent,  Then it was TCL Communication Technology on 3.3 per cent, Oppo on 3.2 per cent, ZTE 2.5 per cent, Sony  2.0 per cent and Microsoft Mobile on 1.7 per cent.  Asustek was on 1.4 per cent.

The top-15 vendors took up 81.4% of shipments. Of these nine were based in China, two in the US and South Korea, and one in Japan and Taiwan.

Global smartphone shipments in the fourth quarter will increase to 396.8 million units, leading to 1.326 billion units for 2015 which will rise 10.1 per cent on year, Digitimes Research insists..