Cue all the Android users of the world giving a collective groan. For years now, users of Samsung – and any other Android device, for that matter – have been arguing with iOS users over their supposed superiority. 

One of the most tangible things they could hold onto was the fact that Samsung Electronics has been the largest seller of smartphones in the world for over 12 years, but now, even that argument has set sail. As of January 2024, Apple has officially overtaken Samsung as the number one most popular smartphone maker, having commanded a huge 20% share of the market in 2023. So what does this mean, exactly? Has the seemingly never-ending debate about the best smartphone seller actually ended?  

Details on Apple’s Triumph

For starters, the data doesn’t lie. Accumulated by the International Data Corporation, Samsung ended 2023 with a 19.4% market share, followed by Xiaomi, Oppo, and Tanssion. 

Despite a 3.2% decline in the market – which was a decade low – Apple was one of only two brands in the top five to record growth, taking the top spot from Samsung amongst fierce competition. Add to this that Apple has already generated around $69.9 billion in the first quarter of 2024, and it’s clear that there is a sea-change in consumer preference.

Is Apple Better Than Samsung?

That being said, just because Apple has a wider market share than Samsung doesn’t mean the iPhone is a better smartphone. There are plenty of definitive reasons for 2023 to be Apple’s year. For one thing, the USP of the iPhone 15 Pro was that it was a ‘gaming’ phone – the first smartphone to smoothly run AAA games – and this would have drawn in a lot of gaming-focused consumers. 

But with sales for Playstation and Xbox still strong, it’s clear that not everyone wants to play fundamentally console-oriented games on a smaller device. 

On smartphones, iGaming has long-represented a key vertical on the app stores. Historically, there has been only a negligible disparity between the number of iPhone and Samsung users downloading these apps, proving that, in some areas of the gaming world, there is no clear winner. The popularity of the industry means that casino developers have engineered their platforms to cater to both camps of users without exposing the technological deficits of the devices being used to access them. In Canada, Apple is currently outranking Samsung in terms of popularity, but that doesn’t mean that a player logging in to play classic table games in Canada on a Samsung phone will notice any lag, glitching, or poor performance. 

It should also be noted that Apple had a very specific strategy for success in 2023. After facing heavy pressure from Huawei in late 2022, they introduced several discounts that cut the price of iPhones by as much as 5% in China, attempting to attract more customers to the brand and halt the Huawei resurgence before it became a big problem. These discounts – while not feasible in the long term – clearly helped to catapult Apple to end the year on a positive note, despite the number of people upgrading their phones worldwide seeing a significant drop.

The Bottom Line

Don’t get us wrong, there are a lot of great qualities to the iPhone 15. The A16 Bionic chip, for instance, shows a great leap forward when it comes to camera innovations and overall long-lasting performance. The iPhone 15 was also coupled with the best Apple watch yet, with the new S9 chip advertised to be 30% faster than the last one, and this would have similarly grabbed people’s attention.

But it’s impossible to judge the superiority of a product based on how much it sells. As mentioned before, there were a lot of things that contributed to Apple’s 2023 success that may not contribute to their performance in 2024. For this reason, Samsung might jump straight back on top, but again, this doesn’t mean it’s suddenly better. Technology across smartphone companies is better than it’s ever been, so the phone you choose ultimately comes down to personal preference. More people just preferred the iPhone in 2023!