Apple iPhone Sales Surge Toward No.1

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Sep 4, 12:46PM EDT

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Apple iPhone Sales Surge Toward No.1 — © iPhone - 1st Gen (CC BY 2.0) by Ryan Tir

The Apple iPhone is so ubiquitous in America that most people would think it is the No.1 smartphone everywhere else. However, this is not true. South Korea’s Samsung holds that spot. That is likely to change soon.

TrendForce puts out an analysis of smartphone unit production globally and by quarter. It measures units by production and not sales. Across the industry, production has been very weak so far in 2023. TrendForce analysts reported, “The first half of 2023 clocked in at a mere 522 million units—marking a 13.3% YoY decline and setting a ten-year low for both individual quarters and the first half of the year combined.”

Production was supposed to be better, according to TrendForce. However, the end of COVID-19 restrictions in China has not lifted production. The number of people emerging from poverty in India has not helped either.

The most noteworthy conclusion of the TrendForce report is that Apple could overtake Samsung as the best-selling smartphone in the world. This is due to a forecast that the new iPhone 15 will sharply boost Apple’s production. The forecast is probably true since this surge has been the pattern for over a decade.

Ironically, Apple had to go through a downturn before its surge. In the second quarter of 2023, Apple’s market share tumbled, likely because it was nearly five months from the launch of the iPhone 14. Apple’s quarter-over-previous quarter production dropped 21.2% to 42 million. That dropped its global market share to 15.4%.

Samsung also had a weak second quarter, but not as bad as Apple’s. Protection quarter over the previous quarter dropped 12.1% to 53.9 million and a global market share of 19.8%.

For Apple to pass Samsung in global market share in the second half of the year, iPhone production will need to be extraordinary. It is TrendForce’s forecast that this will happen in 2023.

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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.