Apple Overtakes Samsung In Global Smartphone Sales

Launching the 5G variant of the iPhone has driven Apple back to the top of the global smartphone makers’ rankings for the first time since 2016, despite the drop in mobile phone sales during the pandemic.

The global smartphone market declined by 12.5 percent in 2020, said a new report by research firm Gartner. The firm noted that the market dropped by 5.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020, with Apple taking the top spot. The company’s iPhone 12 assisted it to record double-digit growth in the fourth quarter of the year, selling almost 80 million phones to overtake Samsung as the largest smartphone maker in the world for the first time in five years.

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Gartner also reported that sales of affordable 5G smartphones slowed down the decline for the fourth quarter. The rest of the year saw a high decline, thanks to global lockdowns driven by the pandemic.

Apple took 20.8 percent of the market share in the fourth quarter of 2020, with Samsung coming in second at 16.2 percent. Xiaomi took the third spot globally, despite not selling in many global markets yet. The company claimed an 11.3 percent market share, while Oppo and Huawei tied at fourth place with an 8.9 percent market share each.