Apple's market share grows as global smartphone sales fall

Counterpoint Research claims that 2023 is a decade low in smartphone shipments, but also that Apple is closing in on becoming the world's biggest seller.

Following its report of an incredibly bad smartphone market in July, Counterpoint says the outlook for the rest of 2023 will see the lowest sales in a decade. Its analysts are predicting a decline of 6% year on year, to 1.15 billion devices.

However, even as the worldwide economy is affected, premium smartphones such as the iPhone are proving more successful than lower-cost models. Consequently, Apple is growing its share.

"There's been a decoupling between what's happening in the economy and consumers buying phones," Jeff Fieldhack, Research Director for North America said in a statement. "So far this year it's been record low upgrades across all carriers."

"But we're watching Q4 with interest because the iPhone 15 launch is a window for carriers to steal high-value customers," continued Fieldhack. "And with that big iPhone 12 installed base up for grabs promos are going to be aggressive, leaving Apple in a good spot."

Source: Counterpoint

Right now is "the closest Apple has been to the top spot," says Fieldhack. "We're talking about a spread that's literally a few days' worth of sales.

"Assuming Apple doesn't run into production problems like it did last year, it's really a toss up [when Apple will be top] at this point," he said.

Apple is expected to announce its forthcoming iPhone 15 in September.

45 Comments

waveparticle 1497 comments · 3 Years

About 1 year ago

"There's been a decoupling between what's happening in the economy and consumers buying phones,"

The decoupling is caused by US government trying to decouple China from the world.

melgross 33613 comments · 20 Years

waveparticle said:

"There's been a decoupling between what's happening in the economy and consumers buying phones,"

The decoupling is caused by US government trying to decouple China from the world.

No, not really. If anything, it’s China that’s been doing that by their actions. At any rate, it’s the worldwide high inflation rate that’s been at the center of all of this. But anaerobic e sales, as you can see from the chart gave been dropping for years. A major reason given is that the worldwide market is saturated. People are go,ding on to phones, tablets, comluters, etc. for a longer time.

melgross said:

waveparticle said:

"There's been a decoupling between what's happening in the economy and consumers buying phones,"

The decoupling is caused by US government trying to decouple China from the world.

No, not really. If anything, it’s China that’s been doing that by their actions. At any rate, it’s the worldwide high inflation rate that’s been at the center of all of this. But anaerobic e sales, as you can see from the chart gave been dropping for years. A major reason given is that the worldwide market is saturated. People are go,ding on to phones, tablets, comluters, etc. for a longer time.

No! The fact of the truth is the decoupling started when Huawei is being totally banned by US.

avon b7 8020 comments · 20 Years

melgross said:

waveparticle said:

"There's been a decoupling between what's happening in the economy and consumers buying phones,"

The decoupling is caused by US government trying to decouple China from the world.

No, not really. If anything, it’s China that’s been doing that by their actions. At any rate, it’s the worldwide high inflation rate that’s been at the center of all of this. But anaerobic e sales, as you can see from the chart gave been dropping for years. A major reason given is that the worldwide market is saturated. People are go,ding on to phones, tablets, comluters, etc. for a longer time.

Well, Huawei hit number one in unit shipments just when sanctions were imposed and that had a definite impact.

It released HarmonyOS for lots of old Huawei China models, effectively breathing new life into them and delaying upgrading of new phones. It also went one step further and introduced a system where users could have their storage capacity upgraded for a nominal price (an excellent move to extend useful life of a device). Battery replacement was also dirt cheap for Huawei users.

https://www.phonearena.com/news/double-the-storage-on-your-huawei-phone-for-a-small-fee_id138452

256GB to 512GB for a flagship device was less than $140.

The cost of living crisis, inflation and other headwinds aren't helping in the wider market either.

When you add it all up it makes sense that global unit sales are down.

Almost a perfect storm.

wonkothesane 1737 comments · 12 Years

So it seems sales peaked in and around 2017. I would not be surprised that this trend continues for some time, until there is another stepchange in product design; such as a breakthrough in battery tech. Otherwise I suppose we have those customers where money doesn‘t matter so much and they simply take the latest and greatest; while other consumers are stretching out the upgrade cycle, partly bec abuse of lack of „real reasons“, partly because of economic reasons.