Apple ends Samsung’s 12-year run as world’s top smartphone seller
SAN FRANCISCO: Apple’s iPhone for the first time became the world’s biggest selling smartphone after rival Samsung’s 12-year run as leader, data showed.
According to data from the International Data Corporation released on Monday, the iPhone stole Samsung’s crown in 2023 with 234.6 million units sold, compared to the South Korean firm’s 226.6 million units. The US tech giant commanded a 20.1 percent market share ahead of Samsung’s 19.4 percent, the IDC said.
Analysts from the closely watched market tracker said Apple’s rise was due to the success of premium devices such as the iPhone. They also pointed to an increasingly fragmented market for smartphones that run on the Android operating system, citing lowend Samsung rivals such as Transsion and Xiaomi as well as Honor and Google.
The success of Huawei’s well received offerings in China also had an effect on Samsung’s drop in sales, the IDC said. The sales data came ahead of the latest release of Samsung models expected at an event in California on Wednesday. According to IDC, global smartphone shipments declined 3.2 percent to 1.17 billion units in 2023, though the group said the industry was recovering after a sluggish period.
“Growth in the second half of the year has cemented the expected recovery for 2024,” the IDC said in a statement. Meanwhile, the CEO of Fortnite-maker Epic Games said Tuesday the company’s court battle to open up Apple’s iPhone to alternative app stores was lost after the US Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
The high court announced it would not hear appeals by either Apple or Epic in the long-running case, effectively putting an end to the legal saga. Epic in 2020 launched a case aiming to break Apple’s grip on the App Store, accusing the iPhone maker of operating a monopoly in its shop for digital services.
Apple takes a cut of as much as 30 percent on all financial transactions in its app shop, prompting complaints about an unfair “tax” for companies. A federal court in San Francisco overwhelmingly rejected the lawsuit, offering only a concession that apps could indicate to users other ways of paying for services outside of Apple’s ecosystem.
Both companies launched appeals, which worked themselves through the appellate process up to the Supreme Court. “The Supreme Court denied both sides’ appeals of the Epic v. Apple antitrust case,” Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said on X, formerly Twitter.
“The court battle to open iOS to competing stores and payments is lost in the United States. A sad outcome for all developers,” he said. Sweeney said it was now up to governments and regulators to order that Apple make its iPhones allow new payment systems. He praised the European Union’s Digital Markets Act, which will do that in Europe starting on March 7. Epic last month won a similar court battle in the United States against Google when a jury decided that the search engine giant wields illegal monopoly power through its Android app store.