Who sells more – Samsung or iPhone

They do sell a lot of phones

There is no one way to interpret the sales figures though, and they aren’t as clear as one would assume. Let us start with the fact that we can look at the sales figures in the US, as well as the global sales figures, and here’s a hint – the two pain a very different picture.

Moreover, the first version of the legendary iPhone was released in 2007, whereas the Galaxy was released three years later. And last but not least, in addition to the Galaxy, the Samsung also produces and sells a range of other, generally cheaper models, which are often also included in the statistics for Samsung smartphone sales and this can distort the picture.

The first fact we should share with you is that both have sold over two billion items. So, the comparison Samsung vs iPhone in sales is a rather extraordinary one.

About 45% of all smartphones in America are iPhones

We mentioned the difference between the US and the rest of the world. We can start by saying that about 45% of all smartphones in the US are iPhones. And if we know that iPhone’s market share used to be even larger, this only means that Apple has sold a lot more phones in the US. On the other hand, Samsung sells a lot more smartphones globally and its market share has been significantly larger in the past six or seven years. In fact, for most of the past few years, Apple didn’t even come second, it was Huawei that generally managed to sell more items worldwide.

Samsung sells more, but will that change

Something interesting happened towards the end of 2019 though. After a long break, Apple managed to sell more phones than Samsung in a quarter. Almost 73 million iPhones were sold during the last quarter of 2019, as opposed to about 70 million Galaxy units. In the whole of 2018, for example, Samsung sold over 292 million smartphones, as opposed to Apple which managed to sell somewhat less than 218 million.

It appears that Samsung is more successful in terms of sales, but it is interesting to note that the last quarter of 2013, and the first two quarters of 2014 were the most successful successive quarters for the company, whereas 2015 was the most successful year for Apple.