Apple was the smartphone market's global sales leader for the entire year of 2023

UPDATED: JAN 04, 2024, 6:40 PM 

The mobile industry has gone through some tough times over the last few years, but as the signs of recovery become clearer and stronger, a new top dog is emerging to snatch Samsung's vendor crown away. Its name is obviously no surprise to anyone, but what may come as a shock to some of our readers is that Apple is today earning its first annual global trophy ever. 

What's perhaps even more astounding is that the Cupertino-based tech giant is breaking a period of supremacy that was going on since 2011. That's right, the last time someone other than Samsung ruled the worldwide smartphone market was all the way back in 2010, when the gold and silver medals went to Nokia and BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion respectively. 

The battle for 2023's overall heavyweight title was very clearly settled during the year's final three months, when Apple absolutely destroyed Samsung 80.5 million units to 53 million and 24.7 percent to 16.3 in market share according to the International Data Corporation's latest industry analysis.

Of course, it's definitely not unusual for iPhones to prove a lot more popular than handsets from any other manufacturer in any given year's holiday season, but even by those standards, Apple's Q4 2023 lead over Samsung, as well as Xiaomi, Transsion, and Vivo, was mind-blowingly large.

In Q4 2022, for instance, Apple "only" surpassed the shipment figures of its biggest rival by 12.6 million units, holding a market share advantage of a little over 4 percent that wasn't enough to dethrone Samsung when the year's total numbers were tallied.

Things were evidently different in 2023, but as much as Apple outdid itself to finish a challenging year for the smartphone market as a whole with a 3.7 percent higher sales score than the one posted in 2022, it was primarily Samsung's poor performance that made this major change in hierarchy possible.

Galaxy handset shipments were down no less than 13.6 percent last year compared to the year before that, causing Samsung's market share to fall from 21.7 to 19.4 percent while Apple managed to climb from 18.8 percent to a 20.1 percent slice of the global pie. Does that give the new industry leader a comfortable advantage going forward? Absolutely not. But it's certainly a feat worth celebrating for Tim Cook, as well as all of the company's executives, shareholders, and even regular old hardcore fans and enthusiasts.

Market growth IS around the corner

Although no one can really predict the future with anything remotely resembling a solid degree of certainty, this is roughly the one hundredth (no, not really) report put together by a reputable market research firm that anticipates an imminent recovery for the long-struggling smartphone world.

What's perhaps more important is that said recovery has actually already begun in Q4 2023, when global smartphone shipments went up a healthy 8.5 percent from the same period of the previous year, and now all that the world's top vendors need to do is keep this new trend going into 2024.

That's obviously easier said than done, but with Huawei on the rise again in the always pivotal Chinese market, Apple's iPhone 15 series sales still booming in many key territories around the world, and foldable devices widely expected to become more and more popular in the near future, it feels extremely realistic to think that smartphone shipments could well exceed last year's 1.17 billion unit total in 2024. 

Behind Apple and Samsung, mind you, the Xiaomi - Transsion - Vivo trifecta of affordable device experts posted healthy numbers of their own during the last three months of 2023, although only one of those three brands also boosted its full-year figures compared to 2022. And no, it's not the one you think, but on the contrary, the one you've probably never heard of before today.