There’s been a lot of pessimism about the iPhone X lately, but a market research firm says that this device was the top selling smartphone in the world by a wide margin in February.
The company also says Apple had all four of the best selling smartphones globally that month.
This analysis comes from Counterpoint Research, who also said Apple’s sales volume was 5 percent higher than it was in February of 2017.
The top four devices in global sales that month were the iPhone X (5.1 percent), the iPhone 8 (3.1 percent), the iPhone 7 (2.2 percent) and the iPhone 8 Plus (1.9 percent).
Photo: Counterpoint Research
The Samsung Galaxy S8 was in sixth place with 1.4 percent of the global market in February. The S9 didn’t debut until March.
Swimming against the tide
Counterpoint Research seems to be contradicting numerous reports that the iPhone X is in trouble. Samsung indicated slow demand for the type of OLED display used in Apple’s top smartphone. TSMC says it’s getting fewer orders for processors than expected. This is the sole supplier of iPhone CPUs, but also supplies chips for many other devices. Similar reports have come from the companies that make Apple’s TrueDepth camera and the iPhone’s power management chips.
However, none of the pessimistic news about the iPhone X so far has been based on information coming from Apple.
Tim Cook was the last company executive to go on the record about sales performance of the tenth-anniversary iPhone, and he did so in February, the same month Counterpoint Research reported on. Apple’s CEO said, “iPhone X was the best-selling smartphone in the world in the December quarter according to Canalys, and it has been our top-selling phone every week since it launched.”
If the iPhone X is actually doing well, it would explain why Apple is supposedly basing all the 2018 iPhone models on its design.
Apple will report on its January-March quarter this Tuesday. That will give us definitive answers on how all the versions of the iPhone are performing in the global market.
