Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), takes back the crown as queen of the smartphone. After five years of Samsung supremacy, Apple returns to the top of the sales chart thanks to theiPhone 12, whose success – linked to connectivity 5G – cushioned the impact of the pandemic on the market.
According to the research firm Gartner, Apple almost sold in the last quarter of 2020 80 millions of phones following the launch of the iPhone 12, surpassing Samsung for the first time since 2016.
In detail, for Apple, smartphone sales fell by 5% between October and December (to 385 million dollars), a much better result than the -12% recorded in all of 2020 (to 1,35 billion). Samsung instead suffered a decline of 12% in the fourth quarter and 15% during the year. In general, not only the drop in consumer confidence caused by the pandemic weighs on these results, but also the disruption of the global supply chain.
The worst news is about though Huawei, which even slips to fifth position, recording a 41% drop in sales in the last quarter due to the sanctions imposed by the US government. The Chinese giant is thus overtaken in the standings by its compatriots Xiaomi e Oppo and drops out of the top-4 for the first time since 2013, when it was even behind BlackBerry and Sony. Another world.
For the ranking of the entire 2020, the lead in smartphone sales remains in the hands of Samsung, but the other two steps of the podium are reversed compared to 2019: ad Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), goes the silver medal, while the bronze goes to Huawei, which saw sales drop nearly a quarter year-on-year.
According to Annette Zimmerman, analyst at Gartner quoted by the Financial Times , the positive trend for Apple should also continue in the first quarter of 2021 and probably beyond, in line with the progressive recovery of the market expected in the coming months.
