Apple's iPhone 7 was world's best-selling smartphone in first quarter of 2017

In a new report, Apple's iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus claimed the number one and two most sold smartphones, during the first calendar quarter of 2017.

Data collected by Strategy Analytics notes that global smartphone shipments reached 353.3 million units in the first quarter of 2017. Of that 353.3 million, 21.5 million were the iPhone 7, with 17.4 million the iPhone 7 Plus.

Given those figures, the iPhone 7 claimed 6.1 percent of global smartphone sales, with the iPhone 7 Plus taking 4.9 percent. Rounding out the top 5 are the Oppo R9s at 2.5 percent, and the midrange 2016 Samsung Galaxy J3 and J5 taking 1.7 and 1.4 percent respectively.

The Oppo R9s retails for around $425. The Galaxy J5 sells for $180 with the J3 retailing for $150.

On April 26, Apple announced its second fiscal quarter results. During the quarter, the company sold 50.8 million iPhones, but as usual did not break down by model.

Apple CEO Tim Cook called the declining second quarter iPhone sales year-over-year partly because of more frequent, and earlier leaks of details for future products. The "iPhone 8" rumor mill started in December of 2015, shortly after the release of the iPhone 6s.

15 Comments

slurpy 15 Years · 5390 comments

About 7 years ago

Nice to know, after the endless, bullshit "weak iPhone 7 sales" headlines and narratives. Apple, while being "decimated" by Android, and having a "pathetic" and "minor" iPhone update, still has the #1 and #2 phones on the planet.

pepe779 10 Years · 84 comments

This report is heavily biased though. All it does is it takes advantage of the sheer amount of combinations of android phone makers and all of their individual phone models. This way the iPhone will ALWAYS win easily. Yes, it's not Apple's fault that the android world is so fragmented, but at the same time this is not really a fair method of comparing these two worlds, because Apple and most of the other brands clearly have a different product strategy. Compare the the entire Apple iPhone line with the entire Samsung Galaxy line for example, which is a more accurate comparison in my opinion, and you will get completely different numbers (in millions of units):

Samsung Q1 '17: 80.2
Apple Q1 '17: 50.8

Let's also not forget these are SHIPMENTS only, not sales, so the title of this article is clearly wrong and misleading.

tzeshan 14 Years · 2350 comments

pepe779 said:

This report is heavily biased though. All it does is it takes advantage of the sheer amount of combinations of android phone makers and all of their individual phone models. This way the iPhone will ALWAYS win easily. Yes, it's not Apple's fault that the android world is so fragmented, but at the same time this is not really a fair method of comparing these two worlds, because Apple and most of the other brands clearly have a different product strategy. Compare the the entire Apple iPhone line with the entire Samsung Galaxy line for example, which is a more accurate comparison in my opinion, and you will get completely different numbers (in millions of units):

Samsung Q1 '17: 80.2
Apple Q1 '17: 50.8

Let's also not forget these are SHIPMENTS only, not sales, so the title of this article is clearly wrong and misleading.

On the contrary, this is the better method than grouping all phones under the iOS and Android lines. Or under individual companies to show Samsung has higher market share than Apple. It make people mistakenly think Samsung Galaxy S7 sells better than iPhone 7. This report is clearer. It clearly shows that Samsung grabbed higher market share by selling much cheaper model instead of S7. The other methods won't reveal this truth.

dominosixtyseven 7 Years · 14 comments

pepe779 said:

This report is heavily biased though. All it does is it takes advantage of the sheer amount of combinations of android phone makers and all of their individual phone models. This way the iPhone will ALWAYS win easily. Yes, it's not Apple's fault that the android world is so fragmented, but at the same time this is not really a fair method of comparing these two worlds, because Apple and most of the other brands clearly have a different product strategy. Compare the the entire Apple iPhone line with the entire Samsung Galaxy line for example, which is a more accurate comparison in my opinion, and you will get completely different numbers (in millions of units):

Samsung Q1 '17: 80.2
Apple Q1 '17: 50.8

Let's also not forget these are SHIPMENTS only, not sales, so the title of this article is clearly wrong and misleading.

Sales and Shipped for these purposes are the same. The manufacturers are not shipping phones out without being sold. When BestBuy, Verizon etc.....get phones they are Apple/Samsung's customers.

gmgravytrain 8 Years · 884 comments

tzeshan said:

pepe779 said:

This report is heavily biased though. All it does is it takes advantage of the sheer amount of combinations of android phone makers and all of their individual phone models. This way the iPhone will ALWAYS win easily. Yes, it's not Apple's fault that the android world is so fragmented, but at the same time this is not really a fair method of comparing these two worlds, because Apple and most of the other brands clearly have a different product strategy. Compare the the entire Apple iPhone line with the entire Samsung Galaxy line for example, which is a more accurate comparison in my opinion, and you will get completely different numbers (in millions of units):

Samsung Q1 '17: 80.2
Apple Q1 '17: 50.8

Let's also not forget these are SHIPMENTS only, not sales, so the title of this article is clearly wrong and misleading.

On the contrary, this is the better method than grouping all phones under the iOS and Android lines. Or under individual companies to show Samsung has higher market share than Apple. It make people mistakenly think Samsung Galaxy S7 sells better than iPhone 7. This report is clearer. It clearly shows that Samsung grabbed higher market share by selling much cheaper model instead of S7. The other methods won't reveal this truth.

I don't even see the purpose of these reports. Who do they serve? Certainly not the consumer. It doesn't serve individual companies because they already know how much they ship or sell and whether they're making any profits or not. Does a report like this help investors in any way? All they would have to do is wait for quarterly earnings to find out if a particular company was doing well or not. Are these reports only good for offering misinformation or numbers without any clear context? I really don't understand what type of value these reports offer. Who can possibly use a report like this and for what reason? Knowing how many units a company ships per quarter, doesn't actually tell anything useful about a particular company. So what if a company ships a lot of units? It might be good if all those shipped units are sold but if all those units being sold are losing money for the company then the report wouldn't be all that meaningful in terms of useful information to get a clear picture of that particular company.

Each time I read some article about how more Android devices are shipped than iOS devices, it really doesn't offer much in terms of context, so how is it useful to anyone. Do people really put out these articles or reports to mislead people? Is this some phenomenon that equates to the theory that more is always better or big numbers are always better than smaller numbers? I just don't get it. It's probably fairly obvious Samsung ships an awful lot of smartphones at various price levels, but it should matter that the company is making or losing money on its entire line of smartphones. Companies need to be profitable to survive.