Apple's iPhone X Does the Trick, Toppling Samsung
Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone X did the trick, putting the company back on top of Q4 global smartphone sales, toppling Samsung Electronics (005930KS), according to tonight’s report by market research firm Strategy Analytics.
Apple’s triumph comes amidst a very troubling quarter for the industry overall. Global sales dropped 9% to 400.2 million units, Strategy Analytics estimates. That's the biggest quarterly drop ever.
And it was mostly thanks to a 16% drop in shipments in China. The firm identifies the “longer replacement cycles” of Chinese users, and the “lack of wow models," as factors that depressed sales there. For the full year, sales of all brands, worldwide, climbed 1% to just over 1.5 billion units.
The report follows Apple this afternoon reporting it shipped 77.3 million units of the iPhone during three months ended in December. That number was below the 80 million average estimate of Wall Street, but enough to put Apple over the top, with Samsung shipping only 74.4 million units, by Strategy Analytics’s estimate.
Apple said in its report that the iPhone X was the best-selling of its various iPhone units in the quarter, better than the iPhone 8, but also older models such as last year’s iPhone 7. It was the first time Apple was at number one since last year’s Q4.
Apple’s market share jumped a point and a half from that quarter, to 19.3%. Samsung had 18.6%.
Apple’s gain was more striking vis-a-vis Q3, when Samsung had 21.2% share and Apple was down to 11.9%. Both companies basically were flat for the full year with where they had been the year before.
Despite the top spot, the firm notes that Apple’s 77.3 million units was down 1%, year over year, and opines the company needs to offer cheaper models if it hopes to increase its shipments:
Despite robust iPhone X demand and an iPhone average selling price approaching an incredible US$800, we note global iPhone volumes have actually declined on an annual basis for 5 of the past 8 quarters. If Apple wants to expand shipment volumes in the future, it will need to launch a new wave of cheaper iPhones and start to push down, not up, the pricing curve.
As for Samsung, it continues to be under assault by Chinese brands, with the three privately held challengers, Huawei, Oppo, and Xiaomi maintaining third, fourth and fifth place, respectively:
Samsung dipped 4 percent annually and shipped 74.4 million smartphones for 19 percent marketshare worldwide in Q4 2017, up slightly from 18 percent share a year ago. Samsung is under pressure from Chinese rivals in some major markets, like China and India, but it remains by far the largest smartphone brand on a global basis, shipping an unmatched 317.5 million units in full-year 2017.”
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