Canalys: 31.9M smartphones shipped in the US in Q2, down 5% YoY; Apple shipped 15M iPhones in the US, up 10% YoY, and Samsung shipped 7.4M units, down 1% YoY
Abrar Al-Heeti / CNET :
Context & Ripple Effects
Canalys puts Q2 US shipments at 31.9M, down 5% YoY — a shallower drop than the region has seen before, but still part of a long slide: North America already hit a five-year shipment low in early 2019. The split inside that decline is the story: Apple shipped 15M iPhones, up 10%, while Samsung slipped 1% to 7.4M.
That means Apple took roughly 47% of a shrinking market, up from its ~40% share a year earlier, and the gap over Samsung widened to more than double. Later readings confirm the pattern held — by 2023 the US was in its third straight quarterly decline with Apple falling far less than Samsung, and by Q1 2024 it was the sixth consecutive quarter of contraction with Apple flat at 52% share.
First-order effects
- Apple converts a down market into a win: 15M US iPhone shipments (+10% YoY) against Samsung's 7.4M (-1%) gives Apple nearly half the US market and a widening lead over its only comparable rival.
- Samsung absorbs the market's contraction almost entirely on its own line item, holding near-flat units while the total pool shrank by roughly 1.7M devices.
Second-order effects
- With Apple taking an ever-larger slice of a smaller pie, the remaining ~30% non-Apple share gets contested harder among Android vendors, squeezing pricing and margins for anyone selling mid-tier hardware in the US.
- Growth concentrated at the top of the market pushes the competitive battleground toward premium devices and trade-in/financing economics rather than unit volume — the same dynamic visible when Samsung's global share leadership coexists with Apple's record Q2 share in 2022.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the US matures into a replacement-driven, two-horse market where Apple's share ratchets upward through each downturn — consistent with its 52% share by Q1 2024 — leaving other Android OEMs structurally marginalized domestically.
- Vendors squeezed out of US volume growth lean harder on global markets, where the picture differs: by Q1 2025 both Samsung and Apple were growing worldwide even as regional declines like this one persisted.
The trend: The US smartphone market is settling into long-term contraction in which each downturn transfers share from the broad Android field to Apple at the premium end.