Apple Overtakes Samsung To Become Global Leader In Smartphone Market For First Time

In 2023, Apple surpassed Samsung as the leading global smartphone seller, selling 234.6 million phones with a 20.1 percent market share.

Image Credit: Reuters

New Delhi: Apple is now the biggest smartphone seller in the world, beating Samsung for the first time since 2010. Apple's success is because more people are buying expensive phones and taking advantage of good trade-in deals. This has helped Apple break Samsung's 13-year winning streak in the global smartphone market.

Even though there were fewer smartphones sold around the world, the market is expected to get better in 2024 with new smart features and new phones coming out. A report from the International Data Corporation (IDC) says that Apple sold 234.6 million phones in 2023, while Samsung sold 226.6 million. Apple now has a big 20.1% share of the smartphone market, making it number one in 2023.

In the year 2023, global smartphone sales went down by 3.2% compared to the year before, reaching 1.7 billion units. Nabila Popal from the IDC's Worldwide Tracker team mentioned that even though some cheaper Android phones did well in the second half of 2023, Apple was the real winner.

The last time Samsung was not the top seller was in 2010 when Apple wasn't even in the top five. Nokia was number one that year, selling 453 million units. Samsung was second, selling 280.2 million units. To give you an idea, in 2010, the BlackBerry makers sold 48.8 million units and were in fifth place on the list.