Global premium smartphone sales rose 1% YoY in 2022, taking 50%+ of the smartphone market's revenue for the first time; Apple took 75% of the premium market
Although overall global smartphone sales in 2022 fell 12% YoY due to macroeconomic difficulties, global premium (≥$600 wholesale price) …
Context & Ripple Effects
The premium tier was already becoming more valuable before this result: premium average selling prices rose in Q2 2022, led by $1,000-plus devices, in an earlier jump in premium-device pricing. That built on a 2021 market in which the five largest brands generated more than 85% of smartphone revenue.
The 2022 figures establish a sharp split between unit demand and revenue capture: while the total market contracted, higher-priced devices produced a majority of revenue and Apple held most of that segment. Later coverage showed Apple’s premium share easing to 71% in 2023 as Samsung and Huawei gained ground in the following year’s premium-market readout.
First-order effects
- Apple becomes the immediate primary beneficiary of premium-market revenue concentration, with its 75% segment share giving it disproportionate exposure to the part of smartphones generating more than half of industry revenue.
- Premium brands are competing over a smaller residual share of the highest-value demand even as overall smartphone sales decline.
Second-order effects
- Samsung, Huawei and other premium vendors face greater pressure to protect or expand their high-end mix, because share gains in this tier matter more to revenue than equivalent gains in lower-priced devices.
- Component, retail and carrier partners serving premium devices become more dependent on the product cycles and pricing decisions of Apple and the other leading premium brands.
Third-order effects
- If premium revenue continues to outpace handset volumes, smartphone competition will be increasingly defined by price realization and ecosystem retention rather than shipment share alone.
- The market could become more economically concentrated around a small number of brands able to sustain premium pricing; the subsequent decline in Apple’s share suggests that concentration need not be fixed.
The trend: This is one data point in the smartphone industry’s shift toward premiumization, where value growth is increasingly decoupled from overall handset-unit growth.