Samsung Electronics Co. and U.S.-based Apple Inc. sold the same number of smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2014, data from a market tracker showed Thursday, suggesting that the world's biggest maker of handsets may have been outperformed by its archrival for the first time in more than three years.

Apple reported in its earnings report earlier this week that it sold 74.5 million handsets in the October-December period. Samsung, in an earnings call Thursday, did not give an exact number but said it sold 95 million units in the cited period, of which smartphones accounted for more than 70 percent.

Strategy Analytics put the handset sales by the two firms at a tie. If true, the quarterly results would mark a 13.3 percent drop from the 86 million units for Samsung, but a 46 percent increase from the 51 million units for Apple.

The market tracker said Lenovo-Motorola came in third with 24.7 million units, trailed by Huawei with 24.1 million units.

Of the 380 million combined global sales of smartphones in the quarter, Samsung and Apple's market share each came to 19.6 percent, according to the data. It marks a 10 percentage point drop for Samsung and a 2 percentage point rise for Apple.

For all of 2014, Samsung shipped 317.2 million units of smartphones, down 2.6 million units from a year earlier, it said.

Apple saw its sales advance 39.3 million units over the cited period to 192.7 million units. (Yonhap)