IDC says Apple has shipped 90.1M iPhones in Q1, the largest number of shipments in a single quarter since IDC started tracking smartphones
Kif Leswing / CNBC :
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the first time any vendor has beaten the quarterly iPhone peak set six years earlier, when Apple sold a record 74.5M iPhones in Q1 2015. IDC's 90.1M count for the December quarter lands alongside Gartner's separate tally of roughly 80M units, which had Apple overtaking Samsung as the world's largest smartphone vendor for the quarter (Gartner's Q4 2020 numbers).
The two trackers disagree on absolute units but agree on the direction: the 5G iPhone 12 cycle converted years of accumulated upgrade demand into a historic quarter. The longer arc matters too — after this spike, the market normalized, and by mid-2024 IDC and Counterpoint were again reporting modest global growth with iPhone sales merely stabilized (Q2 2024 market data).
First-order effects
- Apple ends the December quarter as the top smartphone shipper worldwide, displacing Samsung from the lead it has held across most tracked quarters.
- Samsung now faces a rival whose record quarter came almost entirely from devices priced above the Android mainstream, pressuring its own premium Galaxy S launch window that follows immediately.
Second-order effects
- Android vendors are pushed to compete on 5G availability and camera hardware at the high end rather than unit volume, since Apple is taking share where margins concentrate.
- Component suppliers and assembly partners absorb an unusually steep seasonal ramp, making their capacity commitments to Apple a bigger swing factor in their own quarterly results.
Third-order effects
- If upgrade waves keep clustering around new form factors like 5G, the smartphone market structurally splits into a premium segment where Apple sets the pace and a volume segment where vendors fight over thinner growth — consistent with the muted, discount-driven recovery trackers reported by 2024.
- Quarterly vendor rankings become increasingly cyclical rather than stable, as single-quarter leadership rotates with flagship launches instead of reflecting durable share.
The trend: Smartphone leadership is rotating with each flagship upgrade cycle toward premium-priced devices, letting Apple convert its installed base into record shipment quarters while the broader market grows only slowly.