Global smartphone shipments rose 2% YoY in 2025; Apple led with 20% market share and 10% YoY growth, followed by Samsung's 19% market share and 5% YoY growth
- Global smartphone shipments grew 2% YoY in 2025, driven by increasing premium demand and improving momentum in key emerging markets.
Context & Ripple Effects
The market had already returned to growth in 2024 after its 2023 low, but the pace moderated from 4% full-year growth in 2024 to a nearly flat first quarter of 2025. The 2025 result therefore indicates a recovery that continued but lost momentum.
Premium demand was the clearest stronger pocket: premium sales rose 8% in the first half of 2025, with Apple holding a dominant share of that segment. That backdrop helps explain why Apple outgrew the overall market.
First-order effects
- Apple's 10% shipment growth lifts it ahead of Samsung in the global ranking, while Samsung remains a close second with 19% share and 5% growth.
- The market's 2% expansion, driven by premium demand and emerging-market momentum, gives manufacturers growth opportunities without signaling a broad volume boom.
Second-order effects
- Apple's faster growth raises the competitive bar for Samsung in both premium devices and the markets contributing incremental volume.
- A market growing more slowly than its premium segment shifts competitive emphasis toward product mix and higher-end demand rather than unit growth alone.
Third-order effects
- If this pattern persists, smartphone growth will increasingly depend on premiumization and selective emerging-market expansion rather than a broad-based replacement-cycle recovery.
- The close Apple-Samsung share gap suggests leadership may remain contestable even as the overall handset market matures, with execution across segments mattering more than aggregate market growth.
The trend: The smartphone market is settling into modest overall growth, with premium demand and emerging markets determining which vendors gain share.