Was Apple
the world’s primary smartphone vendor between January and March 2025?
Not precisely. However unsurprisingly, the Cupertino-based tech big crushed all its rivals within the all the time pivotal US market through the 12 months’s first three months, by some means managing to additional prolong an already large lead over arch-nemesis
Samsung.
That is at the least based on the
newest Counterpoint Analysis estimates of “sell-out”, aka precise smartphone shopper gross sales, in
Apple‘s homeland. As normal, this undoubtedly dependable report supplies perception into different cell business traits as effectively, together with the fluctuations of the nation’s premium and low-cost segments, the numbers posted by the highest three US carriers, and the expansion or decline of smaller gamers in comparison with Samsung and Apple.
The iPhone 16e is outshining the Galaxy S25 household
Whereas I do not actually have the information to match the gross sales outcomes of Samsung’s latest unapologetic flagships and Apple’s newest reasonably priced powerhouse (and I am unsure if that might be a particularly reasonable comparability anyway), it is fairly clear that the
iPhone 16e is surpassing its maker’s expectations and the
Galaxy S25 trio is… not.
The S25, S25 Plus, and S25 Extremely are performing worse than their predecessors did this time final 12 months on the US box-office, inflicting a dip in demand for so-called “premium” handsets (priced $800 and above) and even Android smartphones as a complete.
That is an enormous quantity for Apple and a reasonably disappointing one for all different smartphone distributors.
The iPhone 16e, after all, isn’t thought-about premium on this evaluation, however that was clearly not essential for a lot of Verizon, AT&T, and T-Cell subscribers. Extremely sufficient, Apple’s mixed gross sales share on the three cell community operators jumped from 70 % in Q1 2024 to a minimum of 72 % in the identical interval of this 12 months although the corporate’s personal “flagship” numbers have been down.
Which means this report is definitely not all good for Apple, which additionally contributed to the market’s 4 % year-on-year decline in premium gross sales and an general dip of two % between the January-March 2024 timeframe and Q1 2025.
Motorola, AT&T, and T-Cell are up, whereas Verizon is down
Regardless of working primarily in a sub-$300 phase that additionally shrunk by a worrying 5 % through the first three months of 2025,
Motorola impressively managed to spice up its gross sales by 13 % over Q1 2024. That occurred primarily as a consequence of an early launch of recent Moto G fashions, but in addition as a consequence of diminished operations by “smaller manufacturers.”
As we speak’s Counterpoint Analysis research lacks any point out of Google or Pixel units, which is actually not excellent news for the search big’s hardcore followers, and so far as carriers are involved, you may be shocked to seek out out that
AT&T outperformed
T-Cell and
Verizon by way of gross sales progress.
The Moto G 2025 is without doubt one of the shocking winners of the newest US smartphone market evaluation. | Picture Credit score — PhoneArena
That is proper,
AT&T‘s smartphone gross sales jumped by 5 % in Q1 2025 in comparison with final 12 months’s first three months, whereas
T-Cell reported a relatively humble 2 % improve and
Verizon noticed its numbers drop by 6 %. All in all, that led to “comparatively flat” figures for the three carriers taken collectively, which isn’t precisely nice information on condition that basic demand surged in late March (and April) because of the concern that costs would rise after Trump’s China tariffs (quickly) got here into impact.
The persisting political uncertainty makes it unimaginable to foretell how the US smartphone market will “play out” within the present quarter and the remainder of the 12 months, though for what it is value, costs are unlikely to extend anytime quickly for Apple, Motorola, TCL, or Samsung merchandise. That is as a result of the primary three corporations have reportedly stockpiled telephones within the US to doubtlessly final them “by way of summer season” even when sky-high tariffs are reinstated, whereas Samsung isn’t very reliant on Chinese language manufacturing anyway.
