Worldwide sales of smartphones to end-users totalled 329.67 million units, an increase of 13.5 per cent from 290.38 million units in the same period in 2014, Gartner said in a statement.
"While demand for lower-cost 3G and 4G smartphones continued to drive growth in emerging markets, overall smartphone sales remained mixed region by region in the second quarter of 2015," Gartner Research Director Anshul Gupta said.
By contrast, smartphone sales in China fell for the first time year over year, recording a four per cent decline.
"China is the biggest country for smartphone sales, representing 30 per cent of total sales of smartphones in the second quarter of 2015. Its poor performance negatively affected the performance of the mobile phone market in the second quarter," Gupta said.
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He added that China has reached "saturation", its phone market is essentially driven by replacement, with fewer first-time buyers.
Samsung led the tally with 21.9 per cent share in the April-June 2015 quarter, followed by Apple (14.6 per cent), Huawei (7.8 per cent), Lenovo (five per cent) and Xiaomi (4.9 per cent).
In terms of operating system (OS) market, Android saw its global share being affected by the weak performance of China and the strong performance of Apple in the Asian nation.
"Android saw its lowest year-over-year growth of 11 per cent with share reaching 82.2 per cent in the second quarter of 2015, Gupta said.
The total mobile handset market (feature and smartphones) grew marginally to 445.75 million units in the said quarter from 444.19 million units in the April-June 2014 quarter.
Samsung led the total market with 19.9 per cent, followed by Apple (10.8 per cent), Microsoft (6.2 per cent), Huawei (5.9 per cent), LG Electronics (4 per cent), Lenovo (3.7 per cent), Xiaomi (3.6 per cent), TCL Communication (3.5 per cent), ZTE (3.3 per cent) and Micromax (2.2 per cent).