With the current state of the global economy, many companies have to face a lot of bad news. One example has to do with smartphone marketing as a whole. However, despite being on a decline, the smartphone market saw some pleasing growth in Q4 2023.
It’s important to note that these numbers don’t include phones released after December 2023. So, they’re not going to take into account phones like the Galaxy S24 series. Since it’s early March, we will see numbers for devices released after December last year starting in April. That is when Q1 2024 will officially end.
The smartphone market grew a bit in Q4 2023
Companies have been weathering the turbulent economic state, and things have been going up and down. Overall, Q4 2023 saw 323.2 million units sold. That’s a 7% growth compared to Q4 2022. It’s also an 8% growth compared to Q3 2023. That’s good to see, and we can expect that the holiday season had much to do with that. Companies sold their phones at diminished prices to capitalize on all the Christmas cheer.
As for the actual companies, Apple saw a minor growth YOY with a 2% increase in shipments. However, in the last quarter of the year, it was able to overtake Samsung as the largest smartphone company. Samsung, on the other hand, actually saw a 9% decline.
That’s pretty surprising because the Galaxy Z 5 foldables were rather popular. Apple launched its newest devices later in the year, so it was possible that they had a bigger influence on the fourth quarter than Samsung’s devices. However, Samsung was still able to maintain the top spot as the largest smartphone company throughout the entire year.
Moving down the line, Xiaomi saw significant growth in the market. The Chinese company had a pleasing 23% growth YOY. The company was able to push 40.7 million units. One of our favorite underdog companies, Honor, saw a healthy 27% growth.
Huawei, the company that was the most handicapped throughout the entire year, is slowly crawling its way back up to prominence. The companies actually saw triple-digit growth according to the report. It has been working on rebuilding its smartphone brand after being heavily hindered by sanctions from the US government. The company is working its way around the sanctions, and it was able to start implementing some pretty powerful chips into its devices.
Market share
In terms of the overall global market share in Q4 2023, Apple took home the top spot, of course. It maintained 23% of the global market. Samsung followed behind rather closely with 16% of the market. Next up, we have Xiaomi with 13%. These are the only three companies with more than 10% of the market. Below these companies, we have Vivo and Oppo at 7% and Honor at 5%.
Looking at the North American market, we see a few more companies sharing the spotlight. Apple has a whopping 62% of the North American market while Samsung has a much less significant 18%. In third, we have Motorola with 8% of the market. Google is trailing with 3% of the market. T-Mobile and HMD finish off the list at 2%. This marks a significant milestone for Google, as the Pixels series of phones was able to break the 3% mark. Reports state that it shipped 10 million units in 2023. It’s the fourth most popular phone in North America.
Pretty soon, we’re going to start seeing data for the beginning of 2024. So, we will see if Samsung’s Galaxy S4 series was able to make a dent. The Galaxy S24 Ultra (Review) was the most popular model, while the Galaxy S24+ (Review) was the least popular model. However, the Galaxy S24+ is still a fantastic phone.
2024-03-01 15:04:37