Apple Surpasses All Android Manufacturers and Reaches “Absolute Record” in Smartphone Market Share, Enjoying First Place for 2023 – IDC Analysis for 2023
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Market research firm IDC has published impressive numbers for the smartphone market share for 2023. The number one smartphone manufacturer in the market is now Apple, while it sells dramatically more expensive phones.
IDC says Apple has reached an “absolute record market share” for 2023 and has “the number one spot year-over-year for the first time ever.” The analyst group says this represents “a kind of power shift” in the smartphone market.
This record smartphone market share puts Apple at 20.1% for 2023, up 3.7% from 2022. Almost everyone in the Android group is far behind, with Samsung now in second place, having lost 13.6% in 2023, with a market share of 19.4% for the year. Chinese company Xiaomi is down 4.7% with a market share of 12.5%, while Oppo (the parent company of OnePlus) is down 9.9% and is in fourth place, with 8.8% of the market.
Next up is “Transsion,” a company that is certainly not a household name, but has a strong presence in emerging markets like Africa. Transsion is a big winner, with a 30% increase from 2022 to 2023. With a market share of 8.1%, it ranks fifth in smartphones.
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Apple doesn't usually top the list in sales because the average iPhone purchase is much more expensive than the average Android device. Samsung's cheapest phones can be found for around $50, and while you can buy a very expensive foldable that costs much more than an iPhone, Samsung's best-selling models are often the mid-range "A" series, which hover in the $200-$450 range. Other Android manufacturers are in the same category, with low-volume "halo" products and inexpensive high-volume devices.
According to list of best-selling models of 2023 , Apple's best-selling phone — and the best-selling phone model in the world — was the iPhone 14 Pro Max , which costs $1,100. The second- best-selling phone in the world is the iPhone 14 Pro , which costs $1,000. The third- is the iPhone 14, which cost $800 for most of 2023. Apple's cheapest phone is the iPhone SE, which costs $429, but that model isn't selling well.
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The bottom line is that Android manufacturers typically dominate these charts by selling low-end and mid-range phones, but Apple has managed to take the top spot while existing only in the mid-to-high-end phone space. The industry term for this is “average selling price” (ASP), and for Q2 2023, IDC has the average Android phone at $250, while the average iPhone costs $949.
In 2020, Apple ranked fourth in smartphone sales behind Samsung, Huawei, and Xiaomi, which was partly due to its more expensive product lineup. In 2023, Apple surpassed all of these Android manufacturers by selling dramatically more expensive products. IDC’s Nabila Popal concluded, “Apple’s continued success and resilience is largely due to the growing trend of premium devices, which now account for over 20% of the market, reaping the benefits of aggressive trade-in offers and interest-free financing programs.”
Source: arstechnica
