13 years ago, Samsung managed to topple Nokia at the top of the global ranking of mobile sellers. In 2023, the South Korean lost its crown to Apple for the first time.
According to preliminary figures compiled by IDC, Apple has overtaken Samsung in the ranking of manufacturers with the highest smartphone shipments in 2023. The organization distributes 234.6 million iPhones in Apple’s sales network compared to 226.6 million in Samsung. Third place goes to Xiaomi, lagging far behind despite its nearly 146 million units.
All manufacturers in the table show year-on-year declines, except for Apple (+3.7%) and Transsion (+30.8%), a very strong Chinese manufacturer in the African market. Samsung fell more than 13%. The performance of these two vendors with very different profiles is all the more noticeable as the smartphone market is still struggling – -3.2% compared to 2022 and volume is the lowest in 10 years. But signs of recovery appeared in the last quarter, suggests IDC, which expects a stronger recovery for the year 2024.
Apple’s good fortune can be explained by the ever-increasing share (20%) given to smartphones in the high segment – the Pro model and especially the Pro Max are well placed in this respect. and through trade-in offers as well as zero-interest financing programs.
Renewed competition from Huawei in China has created a new challenge for Apple in this market in recent months. But that was unlikely to shake her up enough to prevent her from having a good year. Samsung has also faced attacks from several Android brands in China, such as Huawei, where the South Korean weighs nothing, but also from Honor, OnePlus, Google, etc.
The latest iPhones on sale on the Apple website… in China
Samsung will regain control of the media sector tomorrow by introducing its new high-end Galaxy range. It should emphasize features powered by artificial intelligence, a theme that should accompany all smartphone launches this year, to varying degrees.
Samsung will unveil the Galaxy S24 on January 17
IDC reports that this is the first time since 2010 that Samsung has dropped its top spot. At that time it was mainly fighting against Nokia and the landscape was fundamentally different. We are still talking about ranking mobile phones rather than smartphones. The latter, however, proceeded unconvincingly. Apple eventually managed to form an inseparable couple on the podium with Samsung, beating RIM and its BlackBerry before attacking LG, then Nokia (also read Mobile Telephony: Apple No. 4 Worldwide).
