Roger Fingas
Samsung became the global leader in smartphone marketshare during the March quarter, pushing Apple back into second place, according to production estimates published on Tuesday.
Samsung claimed 26.1 percent of production volume versus Apple's 16.9 percent, TrendForce said. In the December quarter Apple held 20.3 percent, commanding over Samsung's 18.5.
While Samsung's high-end phones have suffered in the wake of the Galaxy Note 7 recall, the company has done well in low- to mid-range segments, TrendForce noted. In fact much of this was attributed to the low-cost Galaxy J series, noting that it helped Samsung become "the only brand that saw positive growth in production volume during the off season of the first quarter."
iPhone production fell 36 percent versus the December quarter and 41 percent year-over-year, TrendForce indicated, pointing out however that this meant an overall improvement in sales. Some of the sales boost was reportedly linked to the (Product)Red iPhone 7.
Production is forecast to drop 17 percent sequentially in the June quarter. Apple typically sees lower sales and production numbers in the March and June quarters, as the rush of launch and holiday sales fades and the company turns its attention to manufacturing new iPhone models.
Android phone makers like Samsung are actually liable to suffer in the June quarter, as shoppers hold off in anticipation of 10th-anniversary iPhones Apple will announce in the fall, TrendForce commented.
Apple is thought to be preparing three new iPhones. While two of these should be "7s" models with 4.7- and 5.5-inch LCD displays, the "iPhone 8" is expected to feature a 5.8-inch OLED screen, with a small section replacing a physical home button with virtual controls. The phone should also have wireless charging, iris and/or facial recognition, and possibly color-changing True Tone technology.
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28 Comments
I just wrote this comment earlier today as a response to a comment on another AI article. Didn't think I'd have opportunity to post it again so soon, but this seems the perfect time...
Funny how folks claim iPhone's low global market share as evidence of some kind of weakness in Apple. How is it that these people miss that Apple is taking 90% of global smartphone profits already. The company, really, doesn't want most of the rest of the market.
Outside the United States there are huge populations, think China, where there is a huge base of very poor people, on top of which there is a much smaller proportion (relative to the U.S.) with the money to afford a premium smartphone. Apple is concerned first with that portion of the global population, same way Ferrari and Louise Vuitton are. So Apple is, in fact, competing extraordinarily well in the foreign markets it pursues. It's just that those markets are NOT synonymous with the names of countries on a global map. They are, for the most part, markets within those countries. Let's call them premium markets. There's one in almost every country on earth. But the China Premium Smartphone market is not the same thing as the China Smartphone market.
"Samsung claimed 26.1 percent of production volume versus Apple's 16.9 percent, TrendForce said."
When has production volume mattered even a tiny bit!? Silly me, I always though the key metrics were sales and profits.Does this production share include the millions of G7s sitting in a warehouse somewhere?