Apple Narrowly Beats Samsung in 4Q16 Smartphone Sales, BlackBerry Drops to 0% Market Share [Chart]

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Posted February 15, 2017 at 8:56pm by iClarified

Apple finished 4Q16 with slightly more smartphone sales than Samsung, capturing 17.9% of the market compared to Samsung's 17.8%, reports Gartner.

It's been two years since Apple topped the global smartphone vendor ranking but its lead is small with only 256,000 units difference.

"The last time Apple was in the leading position was in the fourth quarter of 2014, when its sales were driven by its first ever large-screen iPhone 6 and 6 Plus," said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner. "This time it achieved it thanks to strong sales of its flagship phones — the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus; it also benefited from the weakened demand for Samsung's smartphones in mature markets such as North America and Western Europe, and in some mature markets in Asia such as Australia and South Korea."

Apple Narrowly Beats Samsung in 4Q16 Smartphone Sales, BlackBerry Drops to 0% Market Share [Chart]

Another notable tidbit from Gartner's report is the decline of BlackBerry's market share. The company captured 0.0% of the smartphone market in 4Q16 as it turns its focus towards software. At the time of the iPhone's launch 10 years ago, BlackBerry was a dominate force in smartphone arena.

Notably, TCL recently acquired the rights to design, manufacturer, and sell BlackBerry branded devices. Can the BlackBerry brand make a comeback?

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Yeahright - February 16, 2017 at 7:13am

The number reflects the replacement equipment, not new sale.

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lepaka - February 16, 2017 at 8:29am

I would not say it so easily. First impression, we can say it yes Samsung did sh*t and those users flipped to iPhone, but usually the normal long time users are not anymore switchers, one good reason is the Operating System, once they are connected with one platfform they will stick on it. lets just admit that both iOS and Android are good OS systems, we buy our Apps and if we migrate to the other OS, mostly we loose the Apps and we have to buy them again :( if you look careful to the sold quantities, you see big increase from the Chinese branches (Huawei and Oppo), there are the flippers, they can use the same OS as before and get the same level of Phones for much lower price. Those Phones are selling like chipps all over the world for such cheap prices (supermarket promotions), even the Chinese are not buying them. Apple iPhones grow is just a normal one, from the own Apple markting strategy ...