Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, at an iPhone product ... [+]
Apple sold almost 18 million more smartphones than previous leader Samsung in the last quarter of 2020, according to Gartner.
Apple sold 79.9 million iPhones to Samsung’s 62.1 million in a massive change from 2019’s numbers, capturing 21% of global market share. That’s up 15% from the previous year, while Samsung dipped 12% on strong competition from Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo.
Total smartphone sales for Q4 2020 were down 5.4%, however.
“The sales of more 5G smartphones and lower-to-mid-tier smartphones minimized the market decline in the fourth quarter of 2020,” Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner, said in a statement. “Even as consumers remained cautious in their spending and held off on some discretionary purchases, 5G smartphones and pro-camera features encouraged some end users to purchase new smartphones or upgrade their current smartphones in the quarter.”
Worldwide Top 5 Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor in 4Q20 (Thousands of Units)
Total smartphone sales for the quarter globally were 384.6 million, while in 2019 fourth quarter sales broke the 400 million unit mark.
Xiaomi was the fastest-growing vendor, up 34% to 43.4 million smartphones. Huawei, which lost major international markets during the Trump-era US-China trade war, was down 41.1%.
“The impact of the ban on use of Google applications on Huawei’s smartphones was detrimental to Huawei’s performance in the year and negatively affected sales,” Gartner says.
For the entire year, Samsung retained its global lead in smartphone sales, but Apple and Xiaomi were the only two major smartphone vendors to grow year-over-year in 2020.
Key to growth in 2021?
5G, according to Gartner, which forecasts a return to growth in global smartphone sales in this year.
“In 2021, the availability of lower end 5G smartphones and innovative features will be deciding factors for end users to upgrade their existing smartphones,” say Gupta. “The rising demand for affordable 5G smartphones outside China will boost smartphone sales in 2021.”
