Apple back on top as world’s largest smartphone vendor

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Whilst smartphone sales were down by 12.5% in 2020, Apple reined and became the ‘top smartphone vendor’ in the fourth quarter of 2020, analysts say. The company even managed to surpass Samsung, the first time Apple has done so since 2016. Meanwhile, the previous winner Huawei has now dropped down to third place — due to serious privacy and security allegations, as well as various sanctions in the United States and other countries. Huawei saw the biggest percentage decline of 24% in 2020, Gartner reported. In the final quarter of 2020, Apple sold an astounding 80 million new iPhones, versus Samsung’s 62 million. This works out to be an additional 10 million iPhones sold than the same time last year. Apple’s growth has largely been caused by the release of their 5G iPhone 12 lineup, which debuted back in October 2020. The iPhone 12 mini, despite its recent poor sales, undoubtedly helped Apple pass Samsung with its small form factor and relatively small price tag of $699.

The sales of more 5G smartphones and lower-to-mid-tier smartphones minimized the market decline in the fourth quarter of 2020 — Anshul Gupta, the senior director at Gartner, in the report.

Even during a worldwide pandemic, Apple has been able to grow their market share whilst Samsung's market share declined. According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, they saw their largest number of iPhone upgrades ever in Q1 of 2021 — with the iPhone alone making them $65 billion in revenue for the first quarter of the year.

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Published to Apple Scoop on 24th February, 2021.