iPhone shipments are up, but rivals are taking market share

Both Apple and Samsung have increased their sales in Q4 2024 compared to a year earlier, but rising competition from China's Xiaomi and others mean the iPhone's market share has dropped.

Apple appears to be turning around its problems in China, despite the increased competition from local brands, it was sales in that country that helped boost the iPhone's fortunes in Q2 2024. According to the Wall Street Journal, stronger performance in China led quarterly shipments of the iPhone to rise 1.5% year over year, to 45.2 million.

Samsung also saw growth of 0.7% YoY, bringing it to 53.9 million units. Reportedly, while Apple's growth is ascribed to a recovering Chinese market, Samsung's is said to be because of its focus on AI and its flagship models.

With both Apple and Samsung, however, the growth comes as the overall smartphone market has also grown. Despite their increased shipment figures, both firms saw their overall market share drop.

Apple's share fell from 16.6% in Q2 2023 to 15.8% in Q2 2024. Over the same period, Samsung's share fell from 20% to 18.9%.

In comparison, Chinese firm Xiaomi increased its market share from 12.4% to 14.8% over the same period, while Vivo rose from 7.9% to 9.1%.

That means Xiaomi sold 42.3 million units, only slightly behind Apple. Vivo sold 25.9 million.

Significantly, neither Apple nor Samsung tend to launch new phones during the second quarter. Then Apple will be leaning on its Apple Intelligence feature for the forthcoming iPhone 16 range and expects to see a significant boost in sales.

The likelihood of AI features boosting smartphone sales has also now been backed up by chip manufacturer TSMC. While its second-quarter results will not be announced until July 17, 2024, Reuters says that analysts are predicting a 30% rise in profits because of demand for AI processors.

9 Comments

rob53 3307 comments · 13 Years

About 4 months ago

I really don't care about how many phones China has sold. All this garbage about percentages. Apple sold 45.2M phones in China. That's still a lot. Apple continues to sell millions of phones of every year. I'd rather see total sales figures than percentages of phones, especially when you include garbage phones that are only(?) sold in China.

avon b7 8008 comments · 20 Years

rob53 said:

I really don't care about how many phones China has sold. All this garbage about percentages. Apple sold 45.2M phones in China. That's still a lot. Apple continues to sell millions of phones of every year. I'd rather see total sales figures than percentages of phones, especially when you include garbage phones that are only(?) sold in China.

Well, the percentage value is of an absolute unit sale total so you already have an idea of total sales (assuming you believe the source data because Apple hasn't provided unit sales data for years).

The so called 'garbage' are often anything but and serve the low to mid-end market where people can't afford to spend too much.

The rest of the market is not Apple exclusive and there are plenty of Chinese premium and ultra premium models to choose from which offer more than Apple, hence Apple's dip in marketshare overall. Also worth noting is that Chinese iPhones have been seeing discounting since launch. The more time passes, the higher the discounts.

Definitely not 'garbage' and if you want a folding or flip phone, Apple isn't even in that game. Neither is it in the 'smart car' market so if you're looking for that you only have a very limited Car Play option while others offer the whole integration feast.

danox 3393 comments · 11 Years

Apple profit share not market share ………

igorsky 773 comments · 9 Years

avon b7 said:

rob53 said:

I really don't care about how many phones China has sold. All this garbage about percentages. Apple sold 45.2M phones in China. That's still a lot. Apple continues to sell millions of phones of every year. I'd rather see total sales figures than percentages of phones, especially when you include garbage phones that are only(?) sold in China.

Definitely not 'garbage' and if you want a folding or flip phone, Apple isn't even in that game. Neither is it in the 'smart car' market so if you're looking for that you only have a very limited Car Play option while others offer the whole integration feast.

What exactly is the point of these examples? Flip phone sales are a rounding error and not nearly as popular as Samsung and Chinese OEMs would like you to believe. And CarPlay is an add-on and not a product.

“Shipments have increased” is the takeaway from this article and everything else is just noise.

igorsky said:

avon b7 said:

rob53 said:

I really don't care about how many phones China has sold. All this garbage about percentages. Apple sold 45.2M phones in China. That's still a lot. Apple continues to sell millions of phones of every year. I'd rather see total sales figures than percentages of phones, especially when you include garbage phones that are only(?) sold in China.

Definitely not 'garbage' and if you want a folding or flip phone, Apple isn't even in that game. Neither is it in the 'smart car' market so if you're looking for that you only have a very limited Car Play option while others offer the whole integration feast.

What exactly is the point of these examples? Flip phone sales are a rounding error and not nearly as popular as Samsung and Chinese OEMs would like you to believe. And CarPlay is an add-on and not a product.
“Shipments have increased” is the takeaway from this article and everything else is just noise.

Rounding error or not, they have an impact and YoY sales are through the roof. Of the millions of folding phones sold, some will be lost iPhone sales and Apple doesn't offer a competing product.

Sales are already tough in China as seen by almost continuous discounting.

Car Play as an 'add on' just adds to the problem as competitors offer deeply integrated solutions.