Apple continued its dominance in the global smartphone market as it led shipments during the fourth quarter of 2021. The second spot went to Samsung, which pushed Xiaomi on to the third place for the October-December quarter, considered the best for sales due to the festivities and Black Friday sales.
Market research firm Canalys says Apple claimed the top slot from Samsung with a 22% market share in overall sales, in spite of facing supply chain issues and chipset shortage that forced the Cupertino giant to reorganise its sales plans and divert the chipsets from iPads to the iPhone 13 series.
Q4 of 2021 - Gainers and Losers
The biggest loser over the quarter was Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, which got pushed to the third spot while its domestic rivals Oppo and Vivo also slid one step. The three Chinese companies claimed market share of 12%, 9% and 8% respectively.
Canalys report claimed Apple had edged Samsung of its perch only in this quarter, driven by the robust demand for the iPhone 13 series that arrived in September. The company's supply chain was affected due to the global pandemic that caused Apple to reduce output targets, even as they moved a part of iPhone manufacture to India.
“Apple saw unprecedented iPhone performance in Mainland China, with aggressive pricing for its flagship devices keeping the value proposition strong,” says the report.
Samsung's market share stayed largely constant around the 20% mark during Q4 of 2021. In fact, the South Korean tech giant showed a slight spike in shipments during the last quarter compared to the earlier one, when its share was only 17%. The big loser over the quarter was Xiaomi and the other top Chinese phone makers.
Q1 of 2022 - Things will definitely change
We believe things would change in the first quarter of 2022, given the slew of new flagship launches that Chinese phone makers have lined up. While Xiaomi would be looking to get a leg-up from the global launch of its Xiaomi 12 series, Samsung will be hoping to match it's earlier growth numbers from the Galaxy S22 line-up.
Would Apple be in the race during the first quarter? Looks unlikely though they might make a return in the April-June quarter, provided the company does launch the mid-price iPhone SE around which rumors have been growing around the past few weeks now.
That said, most phone makers would be left juggling chipsets, given that the industry expects shortages to persist at least till the end of 2022. With a slew of new flagship chipsets coming from Qualcomm, Samsung and MediaTek, one thing is certain - we can expect smarter handsets in the next couple of quarters.
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