Samsung and Apple sunk to their lowest shares of the global smartphone market in recent years in the second quarter, as Chinese smartphone vendors came on strong, market research firm IDC said Tuesday. Samsung took up 25.2 percent of the global smartphone market in the April-June period, down 7.1 percentage points from the 32.3 percent posted last year. It shipped a combined 74.3 million units of smartphones in the second quarter, down 3.9 percent on-year, the data showed.

Over the cited period, U.S. Apple Inc. also saw its market share fall 1.1 percentage point to 11.9 percent, while its shipments rose 12.4 percent to 35.1 million units.

Chinese players have made significant strides to catch up to bigger rivals, with Huawei expanding its sales to 20.3 million units in the second quarter, up 95.1 percent from a year earlier. Its market share came to 6.9 percent.

Lenovo also gained ground to take up 5.4 percent of the market in the April-June period, compared to the 4.7 percent it posted last year. It has sold 15.8 million units of smartphones, rising 38.7 percent on-year.

LG Electronics suffered a 0.1 percentage point drop in its market presence over the cited period to 4.9 percent.

Samsung expects a weakened performance for the second quarter as its mainstay smartphone business suffered a slowdown.