iPhone 5s was bestselling smartphone in May at 7M units, beating 5M for 2-month-old Galaxy S5
Samsung battles on two fronts as Apple readies iPhone 6 — (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) is losing smartphone ground not only to cheaper Chinese rivals but also at the high end …
Context & Ripple Effects
The May numbers invert the hierarchy Samsung built over three years of volume dominance: it was Samsung beating Apple in smartphone shipments back in October 2011, and by mid-2012 its quarterly volumes ran nearly twice Apple's per research firms. The Galaxy Note 2 launch in late 2012 extended the streak at the premium end.
What Counterpoint's May sell-through data shows instead is a two-month-old Galaxy S5 losing to a phone launched the previous September — and Reuters framing Samsung as fighting on two fronts, with cheaper Chinese makers pressing the low end while Apple readies the iPhone 6 above it. The story travelled unusually wide for a monthly tracker, picked up by TechCrunch, Business Insider, BGR and half a dozen others within a day.
First-order effects
- Apple is extracting flagship-level demand from a year-old device — 7M iPhone 5s units in May against 5M for the new Galaxy S5 — meaning Samsung's freshest hardware is not yet covering its launch-window marketing spend.
- Samsung's premium-tier margins take the hit directly: it must defend the S5's price against both the discounted 5s below it and the incoming iPhone 6 above it.
Second-order effects
- The iPhone 6 launch converts this from a sales gap into a cycle-timing problem — every quarter Apple's next flagship slips, the 5s keeps selling, and Samsung's S5 window narrows further.
- Chinese vendors pressing Samsung's low end force it to compete on price in segments where its cost structure was built for premium margins, squeezing profitability from both directions at once.
Third-order effects
- If monthly sell-through trackers like Counterpoint's become the industry scoreboard, handset rankings shift from quarterly shipment claims to point-of-sale reality — a metric that favors brands with deep single-model install bases like Apple's.
- The structural risk for Samsung is a repeat of the pattern behind the Note-era run captured in the Galaxy Note 2's lift-off: premium differentiation erodes into a spec race where the incumbent with the widest price ladder absorbs the losses.
The trend: Premium smartphones are entering a one-flagship-at-a-time arms race where launch timing and an installed base matter more than shipment volume — the advantage Apple held when the 2011-2012 shipment crown flipped to Samsung is now cutting the other way.