A new report from Canalys revealed that the South Korean giant Samsung has managed to regain the top position in the global smartphone market in the first quarter of this year, i.e. Q1 2021, and overtook Apple.
However, another report from Strategy Analytics (via Korean Times) has claimed that Samsung is no longer the world’s leading seller for 5G smartphones. That crown is now with Apple as it sold the most 5G-enabled smartphones in the first quarter of this year.
The Apple iPhone 12 lineup, launched in October last year, is the first from the company that comes with support for 5G connectivity. This isn’t surprising given that due to the demand for the phones, it was already expected that Apple might sell the most 5G phones.
What’s surprising is that Samsung has slipped to the fourth position and its market share for the 5G smartphones decreased from 34.6 percent during the same period last year to just 12.7 percent. This is after the fact that the company shipped 17 million 5G smartphones in Q1 2021, which represents an increase of 105 percent YoY.
On the other hand, Apple sold 40.4 million 5G iPhones during Q1 2021, capturing a massive 30.2 percent market share. It’s noteworthy that Q1 2021 was the first quarter when all the new iPhone models were on sale.
With Huawei slowly going out of the picture in this segment, other Chinese smartphone makers benefited. OPPO managed to double its market share to 16.1 percent, grabbing the second position for the 5G smartphones as it shipped 21.5 million units.
Vivo stood third for the 5G smartphones shipments with a monstrous growth of 646 percent compared to the same period last year and shipments of 19.4 million units. Xiaomi came fifth with 564 percent YoY growth and 16.6 million shipments.
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