1.2 billion smartphones were sold in 2014

"Worldwide sales of smartphones to end users had a record fourth quarter of 2014 with an increase of 29.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2013 to reach 367.5 million units, according to Gartner, Inc. Samsung lost the No. 1 spot to Apple in the global smartphone market in the fourth quarter of 2014 (see Table 1). Samsung had been in the top spot since 2012.
In 2014, sales of smartphones to end users totaled 1.2 billion units, up 28.4 percent from 2013 (see Table 2) and represented two-thirds of global mobile phone sales.
"Samsung's performance in the smartphone market deteriorated further in the fourth quarter of 2014, when it lost nearly 10 percentage points in market share," said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Samsung continues to struggle to control its falling smartphone share, which was at its highest in the third quarter of 2013. This downward trend shows that Samsung's share of profitable premium smartphone users has come under significant pressure.""

Source:  Press release from Gartner, 3rd March 2015