For the first time in two years, Apple exceeded Samsung’s smartphone market share during the fourth quarter of 2019.
Samsung maintains the majority of the smartphone market share, but Apple and Huawei are competing hard for additional market share. For the first time in two years, iPhone sales exceeded Galaxy shipments, with Apple selling 70.7 million units in the last three months of 2019 and Samsung selling just 68.8 million. While this momentum is promising for Apple, the company remains in third place behind Samsung and Huawei.
“Apple has surpassed Samsung thanks to iPhone 11 popularity and improvement in upgrade cycle from the larger base of iPhone 6S, 7 and user base,” Neil Shah, partner and vice president of research at Counterpoint, told CNBC by email.