Apple

Apple crushed it over the holidays, shipping more smartphones than any other company

For the entire year, the smartphone market declined 12.5%.

by
Josiah Motley
February 22, 2021

Image: Apple

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Apple might be one of the most well-known smartphone manufacturers in the world, but often, on a global scale, the company gets beat out on sales simply because of the price of its products.

Android-based offerings from companies like Samsung and Huawei typically capture more of the international market, but a new report from Gartner shows that Apple has hit a milestone that it hasn’t hit since 2016. That milestone? Being the most-shipped smartphone manufacturer in Q4 of 2020.

Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner, notes, “Even as consumers remained cautious in their spending and held off on some discretionary purchases, 5G smartphones and pro-camera features encouraged some end users to purchase new smartphones or upgrade their current smartphones in the quarter.”

There are a couple of things that make this milestone interesting. For one, Apple’s new iPhone 12 lineup wasn’t available for the entire quarter. Then, on top of that, Gartner notes that “[g]lobal sales of smartphones to end users declined 5.4% in the fourth quarter of 2020.”

For the entire year, the smartphone market declined 12.5%. Even with Apple’s stellar fourth quarter, Samsung holds the number one spot for the year in total, with competition from Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo.

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