Apple's $749 iPhone XR was the top selling smartphone in North America during the first quarter of 2019 according to new smartphone shipment data shared today by Canalys.
Apple shipped over 4.5 million iPhone XR devices during the quarter, and it made up 13 percent of total North American shipments. Samsung's Galaxy S10+ and Galaxy S10e were the other two most popular smartphones in Q1 2019, accounting for 6 percent of shipments each.
Though Apple's iPhone XR was the top selling smartphone in North America during the quarter, Apple still saw a 19 percent drop in year-over-year shipments.
Apple shipped 14.6 million devices in Q1 2019 in total, compared to 17.9 million devices shipped during the first quarter of 2018. Despite the drop, Apple managed to maintain 40 percent market share in North America, one of the regions where it sees strong performance.
Apple's fall in Q1 followed particularly high shipments of flagship iPhones in the previous quarter," said Canalys Research Analyst Vincent Thielke. "But there was a disconnect between channel orders and consumer demand, which then caused early shipments in Q1 to be challenging for Apple. But moving into March, we did see an uptick in iPhone XR shipments, an early sign that these challenges may be starting to ease at home. Apple has shown how vital trade-ins have become by moving the mechanism to the front and center of its ordering process, and it now frequently uses the net price in its flagship iPhone marketing. The momentum of trade-in promotions in Q2 and Q3 will determine the extent to which Apple can counter negative market forces, such as longer device lifecycles. But the key challenge in coming months remains that its latest iPhones are just not different enough, though new ones are on the way. For its performance to improve in 2020, Apple will need to emphasize radical new features that are most likely to impress consumers."
Samsung shipped 10.7 million devices for 29.3 percent market share, while LG shipped 4.8 million devices and Lenovo shipped 2.4 million devices. Overall North American smartphone shipments were down an estimated 18 percent during Q1 2019, totaling 36.4 million shipments.
Canalys believes that in order to better compete in 2020, Apple will need to launch devices with "radical new features" that will better appeal to consumers. Thus far, rumors suggest Apple's 2019 iPhones will be largely similar to the 2018 iPhones, but with major camera improvements that could draw in upgraders and new customers and better compete with devices like the Google Pixel with its Night Sight mode.
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One thing worth...
One of my best friends has only ever bought LG phones since they started making them. He talks about them by model name as if everyone he encounters also follows phone models like sports teams and is at all familiar with what he's talking about, which they aren't. He's a network engineer.
He still uses a Yahoo mail account. ...which he paid/pays for. Imagine it, an IT professional, paying for a yahoo mail account... And he still listens to the cheesy music we listened to in high school. He has a beautiful doctor wife and 4 great kids. He owns nothing that would be considered a quality product, and is completely unable to understand the difference between a lovingly restored century old handmade wooden canoe and a rubber tupperware boat stamped out of a mold in china yesterday. He lives like John Belushi. None of us who've known him his entire life know what to make of any of these things.
You asked who's buying LG phones, well, that's the one I know.
A 19% decline in Apple’s most popular market should alarm Cook & Co. So it isn’t only China were things get rough. But it doesn’t surprise me either seen the lack of innovation coming from Apple compared to competitors.
Race to the bottom is not the answer. If all you are worried about is marketshare then Apple is not for you. Apple could control nearly the entire market if they sold $300 phones or as the other vendors do (give their phones away). Doing so would not help the bottom line and would impact R&D.
It's not a race to the bottom - it's a race to the middle. That's where all the unit volume is, which is critical for a company like Apple looking to expand their services revenue.
So they can give us numbers for the XR, S10+ and S10e, but they somehow don’t know the numbers for the XS, XS Max, S10, S9, iPhone 8 or any other models.
You forget Samsung who’s also winning... it’s concerning Apple is losing marketshare almost everywhere. The more because Apple’s marketshare isn't that big to begin with. Ultimately it will translate into a second class platform to invest in for developers, etc.
Yeah, not going to happen. Eric Schmidt predicted that back in Dec 2011 and it STILL hasn't come true. The idea that developers go for market share is a myth. They go where the money is. And 1 billion iOS devices are far more valuable than umpteen billions of $50 Android devices where owners never spend money. This is why the average iOS user generates 4X the revenue in The App Store as the average Android user does for Google Play.
Samsung is winning? Is that why Apples iPhone revenues were $31 billion and Samsung's ENTIRE mobile division (smartphones, feature phones, tablets and other mobile devices) only hit $23 billion? Or why Samsung operating profit was down a whopping 60% last quarter? Is that what you call "winning"?
