Apple loses crown as biggest phone maker
APPLE has lost its spot as the world’s top smartphone maker by sales as Chinese rivals eat into its market share.
Sales of the iphone dropped by 9.6pc in the first three months of the year to around 50m, analysts at IDC said, while volumes shipped by Chinese challengers surged.
Beijing-based rival Xiaomi increased its phone shipments by 33.8pc and budget Chinese technology brand Transsion grew sales by 84pc.
Apple’s market share fell to 17.3pc in the first three months of this year as a result, compared with 20.7pc a year earlier. Ryan Reith, vice president at IDC, said a “resurgence of Huawei in China” and “notable gains from Xiaomi” were increasingly challenging Apple and its major rival Samsung.
South Korea’s Samsung is faring better than Apple and claimed the top spot as the most popular smartphone brand by sales, IDC said.
Nabila Popal, the research director at IDC, said: “While the top two players both saw negative growth in the first quarter, it seems Samsung is in a stronger position overall than in recent quarters.”
Over the past decade, Samsung has consistently held the top spot as the world’s biggest seller of smartphones. However, Apple surpassed its rival in late 2023 after the release of the iphone 15 and iphone 15 Pro, its latest flagship handsets.
Apple’s shares have dipped 5pc so far this year amid market concerns that demand for its iphones is waning. Recent upgrades to the iphone have been mostly iterative with limited design changes.
In January, analysts at Barclays warned over “lacklustre” sales of Apple’s current iphone 15 range, and warned they saw “no features or upgrades that are likely to make the iphone 16 more compelling”.
The tech giant has been searching for its next big technology breakthrough, launching the Apple Vision Pro virtual reality headset in February. It is also planning to add new artificial intelligence features to its next line-up of Macbooks and iphones. Plans for a long-awaited self-driving electric car were abandoned earlier this month.
Competition is becoming more intense in the smartphone market as sales decline. China’s Huawei, which in recent years has been hamstrung by US sanctions, is challenging Apple in its home market with the launch of its powerful Mate 60 Pro, while more advanced handsets, such as foldable phones, have grown more popular among the richest smartphone fans in Asia.
Apple reported a 13pc decline in revenues in its “greater China” region to $20.8bn (£16.7bn) in the three months ending in December, according to its latest financial report.
The global smartphone market shrank in 2023 as rising interest rates eroded consumers’ ability to splash out on the latest gadgets. Shipments of phones dropped 4pc compared with 2022, according to data from Canalys. However, IDC said the wider market appeared to be showing signs of rebounding. Smartphone sales climbed 7.8pc to 289m in the first three months of 2024, the analysts said.
Separately yesterday, Samsung agreed to produce its latest generation of semiconductors in the US, securing $6.4bn in subsidies from the White House under Joe Biden’s Chips Act.
Samsung will ramp up a new microchip manufacturing plant in Taylor, Texas, as part of a $40bn US spending spree. The US has been spending billions of pounds to attract foreign chip makers to America in an attempt to reinforce its domestic technology supply chain.