How Samsung reclaimed top spot in smartphone sales in February
text_fieldsSeoul: Samsung, the South Korean tech giant becomes the top vendor in the worldwide smartphone market to reclaim the top spot in global smartphone sales in February. According to the reports, Samsung tops with a market share of 23.1 per cent while Apple Inc. comes second with 22.2 per cent share.
Samsung has been introducing new Galaxy S devices in mid-February each year, but this year, the company released the S21 in January with lower price tags, in an apparent move to take over market share of Huawei, which is struggling from US sanctions, and better challenge Apple's iPhone 12 series that was released in October.
Samsung's domestic sales of its new flagship smartphone series, the Galaxy S21, had surpassed 1 million units last week. Galaxy S21, which was released on January 29, achieved the milestone 57 days after its launch, about one-month faster than its predecessor the S20.
Unlocked S21 smartphones made up 20 percent of its total sales in South Korea, and 60 per cent of them were purchased online, its data showed.
According to market researcher Strategy Analytics, Samsung shipped 24 million units of smartphones for a 23.1 per cent market share last month, outpacing Apple which sold 23 million units for a 22.2 per cent share.
China's Xioami came in third with an 11.5 per cent share, followed by Vivo with 10.6 per cent and Oppo with 8.5 per cent.
In January, the South Korean tech giant logged a market share of 15.6 per cent, while Apple had 25.4 per cent. In February, Samsung's smartphone shipments were 26 per cent more than a year earlier, and even 12 per cent more than the pre-pandemic levels in February 2019.
According to market researcher Strategy Analytics,The market share gap between Samsung and Apple generally has been around 5 percentage points in February, but with robust sales of the US tech titan's iPhone 12 series, it narrowed to only 1 percentage point this time, Strategy Analytics data showed.
In February, Apple's iPhone sales soared 74 per cent from a year earlier and 35 per cent from two years ago.