Apple and Samsung have been arch-rivals for years. While Apple primarily caters to the premium consumer base, Samsung has a wide range of smartphones and other products for all kinds of budgets. Apple has maintained its lead in the premium smartphone market for years. The company, last year, dominated the list of smartphones that sold the most in 2022. Out of every 10 smartphones sold worldwide, eight were iPhones. Now, a new report by Global Stats (via), Apple overtook Samsung as the most popular smartphone company for the first three months of 2023.
Let’s take a look at more details about how Samsung and Apple fared for the first quarter of 2023.
Apple Ate Some More of Samsung’s Market Share in 2023
Samsung, compared to Apple, has had a busy year so far with the launch of the Galaxy S23 series and multiple A-series phones. Despite being in the news and the market, Samsung has reportedly failed to attract as many buyers to outperform Apple as the most popular smartphone company.
The Global Stats report stated that Samsung had the highest market share of all smartphones in 2022. However, in the past six months, the gap between Samsung and its arch-rival has narrowed down. In fact, Apple slowly began to overtake Samsung as the most popular smartphone brand in October.
Apple launched its new iPhone, the iPhone 14 series in September. Therefore, it is no surprise that the company attracted many buyers. The iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max were reportedly among the consumer favourites for almost the whole Q4 quarter of 2022, which is also the launch quarter for the iPhone.
The trend seemed to have continued in 2023 as the iPhone is now the leading smartphone. The report stated that in January 2023, Apple had a 27.6 per cent market share worldwide, whereas Samsung is tailing behind at 27.09 per cent. Both companies saw a marginal dip in their market share in February 2023.
Also Read: iPhone 14 Pro Review: The Best iPhone You Can Buy This Year
It is worth noting that February is the time when Samsung launched the Galaxy S23 series. The phones were available for purchase in various markets in February itself. Samsung still has not managed to beat Apple, despite launching its latest and greatest offering worldwide. The US tech giant, on the other hand, has only launched a new yellow colour option for the iPhone 14.
According to the Atlas VPN report, the world has about 6.84 billion smartphone users, of which 1.85 billion are using iPhones and 1.82 billion are on Samsung devices. It is important to note that these numbers are just estimates, as some people might have multiple phones and use both Apple and Samsung phones.
The latest data suggests that Apple has a 27.11 per cent market share, whereas Samsung is second at 26.74 per cent.
Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Device Vendor Market Share
Third on the list is Xiaomi, which has 12.3 per cent of the total smartphone users worldwide. OPPO and Vivo are fourth and fifth on the list. While OPPO has a 6.87 per cent market share, about 5.3 per cent of the market has Vivo phones.
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