Apple’s smartphone shipments sailed past long-time rival Samsung for the first time in two years during the latest quarter, according to data released by several leading industry analysts.
Fresh from delivering a revenue and profit record in fiscal Q1, Apple has now surged to the top of the pile in the mobile manufacturing stakes after shipping 72.9m units during the final three months of 2019, according to Counterpoint Research.
Samsung has been the world leader for the last 18 months, but the company only managed to shift 70m of its Galaxy smartphones during the same period.
Similar data published by Strategy Analytics puts Apple on 70.7m units and Samsung on 68.8m.
“Apple has surpassed Samsung thanks to iPhone 11 popularity and improvement in upgrade cycle from the larger base of iPhone 6S, 7 and user base,” Counterpoint’s VP of research Neil Shah said.
While Apple stole a march on rivals in Q4 2019, it did not manage to usurp Huawei for the whole year even though the fallout of the Sino-US trade battle weighed heavily on the Chinese company.
Huawei now corners 39% of the market in China, according to Canalys, which is more than three times the share held by Apple (11.8%).
Apple’s finances and sales have been big news this week following the release of its latest quarterly report.
The recent strength of iPhone 11 sales helped Apple to post strong revenues of $91.8bn for fiscal Q1, which was a 9% improvement on the previous year and ahead of its own guidance.
Apple’s iPhone division also bounced back with revenues of $55.96bn.
The Cupertino-based company is now pushing ahead with plans to launch the long-rumoured budget iPhone, which is likely to come to market at around the same time as Samsung’s Galaxy S20 series, which will be unveiled in February.