Analysts: Apple was leader in smartphone market around holiday 2019

Apple was the market leader in smartphones in the holiday quarter, according to three analyst firms. Over the year, Apple has lost its second place in the global smartphone market to Huawei and is now third.

According to Canalys, Apple delivered 78.4 million smartphones, about ten percent more than Samsung. Counterpoint Research comes to roughly the same conclusion, but doesn’t list exact numbers. Strategy Analytics also released numbers that show a much smaller difference between Apple and Samsung.

The three analyst firms put Apple in first place in the last quarter of 2019, thanks to the release of the iPhone 11 series. Especially the iPhone 11 with its lower suggested retail price has boosted sales, the analysts estimate. Apple traditionally has a big peak in the holiday quarter and then deliveries plummet. Competitors such as Samsung, Huawei and Xiaomi have a much smaller difference between the various quarters.

Over the year, Apple lost its second place to competitor Huawei. According to Canalys, Samsung delivered two percent more smartphones in 2019 than in 2018, reaching almost 300 million units. This means that the South Korean company remains the market leader. Huawei came in at 240 million, the manufacturer claims. That would mean second place, because Apple delivered approximately 200 million units, according to Canalys.

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