Image via Counterpoint Research. Source: Market Monitor Service
While growth of services and growth of the Mac, driven by work-from-home trends and Apple Silicon, show that Apple is more than just an iPhone company, iPhone is currently the company’s bread-and-butter, and it won the U.S. last year. Apple Insider highlights new numbers from Counterpoint Research.
The numbers sort of went as one might expect. The first quarter of 2021, the first full quarter of sales for the iPhone 12 line, gave the company a strong start. iPhone sales dipped a bit in Q2, took another dip in Q3, then hit with a kick-out-the-jams comeback in Q4. Through nearly all of that, it owned half the market. According to Counterpoint, iPhone’s share of the U.S. smartphone space was 55% in the first quarter of 2021, 53% in Q2, a slip to 47% in Q3, before an end that was higher than the year’s beginning. iPhone wrapped Q4 with a 56% share of the U.S. smartphone space.
Impressive though that performance is, it sort of pales compared to the same quarter a year earlier. iPhone’s share in the fourth-quarter of 2020 was 65%, according to Counterpoint’s estimate. There are so many moving parts though. The fourth-quarter of 2020 saw the later than usual launch of iPhone 12, the staggered release of devices in the iPhone 12 line, the introduction of the first 5G-enabled iPhones, and the throes of the - then less-than-a-year-old pandemic. Meanwhile, the fourth-quarter of 2021 had supply chain issues.
It would be silly to fixate on that fourth-quarter difference for a few reasons, the biggest being, we can’t check Counterpoint’s numbers since Apple doesn’t report unit sales anymore. If we’re going to take their word that there was a fourth-quarter drop from one year to the next, might as well fixate on their other assertion - iPhone owned half the U.S. smartphone market for almost all of 2021.
Samsung was a distant second in every quarter, by the way. If that kind of thing concerns you.
