The second quarter of 2015 saw the slowest growth rate for global smartphone sales since 2013, according to a new report released by information technology research and advisory firm Gartner Thursday.

One factor in the slowing growth rate of worldwide sales of smartphones could be the fact that smartphone sales took a dip for the first time year over year in China with a decline of 4 percent. China was responsible for 30 percent of total smartphone sales in the second quarter of 2015.

"Its poor performance negatively affected the performance of the mobile phone market in the second quarter," Gartner's research director Anshul Gupta said in a statement.

Samsung sales dropped 5.3 percent in the second quarter of 2015, losing 4.3 percent of its market share. However, the company's rival smartphone maker Apple recorded an increase of 36 percent in sales, helping the company gain 2.3 percentage points in market share. In particular, Apple's iPhone sales also grew 68 percent in China this quarter. Huawei was the company that recorded the highest global sales growth rate with an increase in sales of 46.3 percent.

Similarly, Android's global share of the market took a hit from the lower smartphone sales and Apple's dominance in China with its lowest year-over-year growth of 11 percent, giving it a market share of 82.2 percent in the second quarter of 2015, according to Gartner. As previously mentioned, smartphones operating with iOS had an increase of 36 percent in sales last quarter, giving iOS 14.6 percent of the market share.

Still, nearly 330 million units of smartphones were sold in the second quarter of 2015, which was a 13.5 percent increase from the same period in 2014.