Roger Fingas
Apple saw the iPhone drop to 11.9% of the global smartphone market in the March quarter, even as Chinese rivals like Huawei bucked the industry's overall decline.
Apple's share fell against 14.1% in the first quarter of 2018, according to new Gartner research comparisons. That translates into a drop from about 54.1 million units to around 44.6 million.
Huawei's share rose from 10.5% to 15.7%, the latter representing 58.4 million units. Fellow Chinese companies Oppo and Vivo grew to shares of 7.9% and 7.3% from 7.3% and 6.1%, respectively.
South Korea's Samsung remained the industry leader, even as its share dipped from 20.5% to 19.2%, with first-quarter sales of 71.6 million phones.
The global smartphone market shrank from 383.5 million devices to 373 million. Gartner blamed the result on shoppers gravitating toward lower-cost phones, whether they normally buy "premium" smartphones like those from Apple and Samsung, or they are feature-phone owners deciding not to make the leap.
"The price cut for iPhones across markets helped drive up demand but wasn't enough to restore growth in the first quarter," wrote Gartner research director Anshul Gupta. "Apple is facing longer replacement cycles as users struggle to see enough value benefits to justify replacing existing iPhones."
Huawei is poised for serious trouble, though, given bans on U.S. ties, Gupta added.
"Unavailability of Google apps and services on Huawei smartphones, if implemented, will upset Huawei's international smartphone business which is almost half of its worldwide phone business. Not the least it brings apprehension among buyers, limiting Huawei's growth in the near term," he commented.
Chip Loder
Marko Zivkovic
Wesley Hilliard
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
25 Comments
Huawei's death should help Samsung across the globe & in Europe.
If loss of market share starts eroding profits, Apple will have to do something about price, or pull a rabbit out of the hat on a must have feature. Steady as she goes risks irrelevance.
Apple is now 6 years lagging behind the world, e.g. 5G modem in 2025. No break-through in house apps, e.g. still the same Contacts app of 5 years ago. Poor HomeKit & Siri than Google Home & Assistant. Poor ergonomic screen design, you have to press buttons with your fingers flying to every corner of the screen to do simple tasks, the bigger the screen, the longer distance your fingers need to travel.
my friend told me that his iPhone 6s is as fast as his son’s iPhone X. I asked him how come. He said it’s because he never updates the iOS and thus able to retain the original speed. Comparing to my iPhone 6 Plus with the current iOS version, his iPhone 6s runs like the Flash. And, he keeps the lovely 32-bit games which I have to forget because there’s no more 32-bit version.
frankly, my kids are using latest iPhone versions. But I find nowhere near to upgrade mine. Apple, do you know your problems?