Apple increases its market share to over 20 percent. In the Christmas business, the iPhone manufacturer is even more ahead of its South Korean competitor. However, the market will end 2023 with a loss.
Apple has replaced Samsung as the world‘s largest smartphone manufacturer. According to current information, this applies Figures from IDC at least for the past year. 2023 was therefore the first year since 2010 that Samsung did not finish as market leader.
Apple secured the top position with 234.6 million units shipped. This corresponds to growth of 3.7 percent compared to 2022 and a market share of 20.1 percent (plus 1.3 points). Samsung’s sales figures fell by 13.6 percent to 226.6 million units, causing its market share to shrink by 2.3 points to 19.4 percent.
Xiaomi and Oppo in third and fourth place also suffered falling sales figures. New to the top 5 is the Chinese provider Transsion with a market share of 8.1 percent. The company, which is primarily active in Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Latin America, improved by 30.8 percent to 94.9 million units.
The global market shrank by 3.2 percent to 1.167 billion units in 2023. “While we have seen strong growth from lower-end Android vendors like Transsion and Xiaomi in the second half of 2023, driven by rapid growth in emerging markets, the biggest winner is clearly Apple,” said Nabila Popal, Research Director on IDC’s Worldwide Tracker team. “Apple is not only the only player in the top 3 to show positive growth, but also number 1 year-over-year for the first time ever. Apple’s continued success and resilience is due in large part to the increasing trend toward premium devices, which now represent over 20 percent of the market.”
The fourth quarter of 2023 developed positively. In the last three months of the year, the market grew by 8.5 percent to 326.1 billion units. Here too, Apple was clearly ahead of Samsung. While the Cupertino company was able to sell 80.5 million iPhones, Samsung had to make do with 53 million devices.