While Apple may have the single best-selling smartphone model in the world in the iPhone, one bit of information rarely is mentioned: sales of the company’s flagship smartphone consistently underperform the global market as a whole.
While the iPhone may be the most popular single smartphone, Android phones, which make up 88% of all smartphones sold, are significantly cheaper, according to a report from Business Insider.
In general, one can use iPhone sales data to roughly track the smartphone market. However, the market is quickly approaching saturation, and smartphone sales are slowing. This is obviously a big problem for Apple, which has underperformed the global market as a whole with the iPhone since 2012.
Steven Milunovich and Benjamin Wilson, financial analysts for UBS, have sifted through the numbers on smartphone sales and have published a number of findings regarding where the company is winning and where it is losing.
According to the findings, Apple is outperforming the market in the United States, Europe, and Japan. “The US premium smartphone market declined by 11% in F16,” read the report. “Apple slightly outperformed the market with units down 10%.”
According to the analysts’ findings, Apple’s sales are still declining in the US, and doing worse than everyone else in China. “Total shipments to China declined by 18% in F16…The premium smartphone market in China was down 3%. Apple significantly underperformed the market with units down 18%, losing 10 points of share to domestic smartphone makers Huawei, Oppo, and Vivo,” read the report.
With Apple set to release the tenth-anniversary iPhone 8 next year, hopefully the company can make some gains on the global smartphone market
