iPhone shipments made up 55% of the U.S. smartphone market in the second quarter of 2023, according to a market-analysis firm. That’s the third quarter to a row that Apple handsets have made up more than half of the market.
iPhone shipments actually declined slightly in the April-though-June period, but not as much as some Android-makers — Samsung shipments dropped almost 40%.
iPhone controls over half US smartphone shipments
Apple has less than a quarter of the global smartphone market. But the situation is very different in Apple’s home country.
iPhone shipments made up 55% of the total in the second quarter, as noted. And that’s a considerable jump — in the same quarter of 2022, Apple had 45% of the market, according to data from Counterpoint Research.
The company has been on a roll for a year now. In the January-to-March period, iPhone had 52% of the market. In the last quarter of 2022, iPhone made up 57% of smartphone shipments in the United States. It had 50% in the quarter before that (see chart below).
Apple is weak but Android tanked
Despite the rise in US market share, this was not a strong quarter for iPhone — shipments declined 6% year over year. But Android did worse.
“Android brands like Samsung, Motorola and TCL-Alcatel saw the steepest declines in shipments, while Apple’s shipments were more resilient,” said Counterpoint analyst Matthew Orf. To add numbers to the comment, Samsung went down 37%, Motorola dropped 17% and TCL-Alcatel plummeted 69%.
Chart: Counterpoint Research
Looking at the whole U.S. smartphone market, Orf said, “Consumer demand for smartphones was tepid in Q2 2023, with the summer slump in sales coming early. Despite inflation numbers falling through the quarter and ongoing strength in the job market, consumers hesitated to upgrade their devices amid market uncertainty. We expect this trend to continue through Q3 2023, but the expectations from the upcoming iPhone 15 remain bullish.”
Apple is expected to launch the iPhone 15 series in September, at the end of the current quarter. Leaks indicate faster processors, better cameras and USB-C will be on the list of specifications.
