According to research firm Gartner, the global sale of smartphones to end users returned to growth digits in the first quarter of 2018, a 1.3 percent increase over the same period in 2017.

Close to 384 million smartphones were sold in the first quarter of this year, representing 84 percent of total sales. Sales of all kinds of mobile phones, including feature phones, reached 455 million units in Q1 2018.

"Demand for premium and high-end smartphones continued to suffer due to marginal incremental benefits during upgrades", said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner. "Demand for entry-level smartphones and low mid-tier smartphones improved thanks to better-quality models."

Apple is still in second place, claiming an estimated 14.1 percent market share in Q1 2018 this is slightly better than last year but the growth is within the margin of error for being flat. 

Gartner warned: "Even though demand for Apple's iPhone X exceeded that of iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, the vendor struggled to drive significant smartphone replacement, which led to slower-than-expected growth in the first quarter of 2018. With its exclusive focus on premium smartphones, Apple needs to significantly raise the overall experience of its next-generation iPhones to trigger replacements and lead to solid growth in the near future."

While there appears to be sluggish movement and weakness in the Chinese market which is impacting brands including Vivo and OPPO, Samsung's mid-tier range of smartphones is still being hampered by these competitors.

The South Korean tech giant is under pressure to perform, despite the launch of the new flagship Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+. The Samsung Note 8 also provided a boost to sales figures, but as Chinese companies continue to secure customers, Samsung's growth has slowed, leading to an estimated 0.3 percent loss in market share.

Huawei and Xiaomi secured the third and fourth top smartphone vendor spots respectively. Huawei's market share increased by 1.5 percent, while Xiaomi market share increased by four percent.