Apple Inc’s iPhone dethroned Samsung Electronics Co devices to become the best-selling smartphone series last year, the first time South Korea’s largest company has lost the top spot since 2010.
The iPhone accounted for one-fifth of the global market with close to 235 million units last year, research firm International Data Corp (IDC) said.
Samsung, whose shipments slumped by a double-digit percentage to 226.6 million units, was second, ahead of Chinese device makers such as Xiaomi Corp (小米).
Photo: Reuters
While Apple has dominated the holiday quarter in recent years, its surge ahead of Samsung over a full year is unprecedented and suggests Apple is weathering an industry-wide slump better than rivals.
Apple benefited from aggressive offers that have enticed a shift toward premium devices. It expanded shipments last year despite a lukewarm reception late in the year for the iPhone 15 in China — its biggest international market — where Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) growing popularity and a widening ban on government use is depressing sales.
“While we saw some strong growth from low-end Android players like Transsion (傳音) and Xiaomi in the second half of 2023, stemming from rapid growth in emerging markets, the biggest winner is clearly Apple,” IDC research director Nabila Popal said. “All this despite facing increased regulatory challenges and renewed competition from Huawei in China, its largest market. Apple’s ongoing success and resilience is in large part due to the increasing trend of premium devices, which now represent over 20 percent of the market.”
The shift up the smartphone price chain has been driven in part by attractive trade-in offers and interest-free financing, IDC said.
Apple was the only player in the global top three to register growth, of 3.7 percent, but it has not been immune to the wider decline. Sales in China of the latest iPhone are significantly down from its predecessor, with some analyst expecting those drops to deepen.
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