As Samsung Sales Surge, a Threat to iPhone 7

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 5:02AM EST · Published Aug 2, 9:10AM EDT

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As Samsung Sales Surge, a Threat to iPhone 7 — © courtesy of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.

By the time Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAP) iPhone 7 comes out of the box, Samsung’s success already may have eaten up demand for high-end smartphones. A new piece of research shows that is entirely possible.

According to Strategy Analytics:

Samsung’s Galaxy S7 edge was the world’s top-selling Android smartphone model in the first half of 2016. Samsung currently accounts for the three top-selling Android smartphone models shipped worldwide.

Linda Sui, director at the Strategy Analytics, said:

Global Android smartphone shipments grew 5 percent annually from 552.2 million units in H1 2015 to 577.3 million in H1 2016. The Android smartphone category is outgrowing Apple iOS, whose global smartphone shipments fell 16 percent annually from 108.7 million in H1 2015 to 91.6 million in H1 2016.

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Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics, added:

We estimate the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge model shipped 13.3 million units and accounted for 2 percent share of all Android smartphones shipped worldwide in H1 2016. Samsung’s Galaxy S7 edge is currently the world’s most popular Android smartphone. The S7 edge is wildly popular in dozens of countries globally, due to its attractive curved hardware design blended with a sidebar of apps that consumers find easy to use.

To dig deeply into the Galaxy S7 edge market, Apple’s iPhone 7 will have to be a revolutionary product, and not simply an advance of the iPhone 6 family, the demand for which has faltered badly. If a successful new iPhone launch is measured by 70 million units sold in its first full quarter on the market, Apple has a steep mountain to climb.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.