What smartphones the consumers in the top five global economies are using?
The smartphone revolution is under-hype, more people have access to phones than access to running water. We’ve never had anything like this before since the beginning of the planet. – Marc Andreessen, Mosaic Co-author.
There isn’t any biome left in our lives that hasn’t been influenced by the smartphone culture yet. Checking out restaurants, hailing a cab after work; ordering a sweater for your mother back home; taking notes on the go (even if you lack a pen and paper), and most importantly: taking snaps whenever you desire; this simple, albeit, a sophisticated piece of technology is continually making our lives easier, more efficient and “smarter” every day. In this article, we delve into the most popular and sought-after smartphone brands (currently) in China, the USA, Germany, The UK, and Japan.
The smartphone market in China
Let’s start with China, the most unique smartphone market in the world: a phone maker can be a global sales leader without ever treading beyond Chinese borders, and small upstart challengers can suddenly explode in popularity from out of nowhere.
By the end of 2017, five companies viz. Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, and Apple occupied 91 percent of the overall smartphone market in China. Companies like ZTE, Meizu, and Lenovo arestruggling to find a foothold in their home country while global smartphoneleader Samsung is now at a 2.2 percent share in China and deteriorating. Oppo and Vivo have prioritized rural China, Xiaomi has been and remains dominant in online sales, and Huawei has focused primarily on urban China, and it’s reaped the rewards of it as one of the leading brands. Urban China alsoremained a bright spot for Apple helping it, finally, maintain its status as apremium luxury brand.
The smartphone market in the UnitedStates
Coming to the United States, the top smartphone brand for the year 2017 oscillated between Apple and Samsung, with Apple claiming the top spot in three quarters compared to Samsung’s lone win in the second quarter, due to huge reception generated by its flagship Samsung Galaxy S8. Nonetheless, Apple stole the spot pretty soon with the iPhone X released in November. Apart from these two, the US market is also shared by LG, ZTE (the only Chinese brand successful in the US market), and Motorola, with LG occupying a higher status than the latter two.
German phone market
The battle between Samsung and Apple are the same in the German smartphone market as well; these two brands occupy 70% of the market in terms of shipments. Apple’s iPhone 8 demand after launch was soft compared to the iPhone 7. Samsung Galaxy S8 was the best-selling model, capturing 13% of the smartphone market. Samsung maintainedits broad portfolio with strong representation in all key price bands. Under these two, comes three more brands which occupy significant places in Germany-Huawei,Motorola, and Sony. In quarter 4, Nokia made a global comeback and took the 4thposition in feature phones & overall Phone sales in Germany, which was traditionally a strong Nokia market.
The market in the United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, however, we have a clear winner between Apple and Samsung-Apple. The iPhone 7 was the bestselling smartphone in the UK (15% share) during the third quarter of 2017, with the company taking 34.4% of the total smartphone market share in the period. Samsung also performed well, taking 34% of the smartphone share; after iPhone 7, Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus came second and third with 9% and 6% shares respectively. Chinese vendors Huawei, Alcatel, and Motorola capture the next position in the UK smartphone market.
However, things changedslightly in quarter 4 when HMD, the first time since 2010, brought the Nokiabrand into the top 3 groups on the UK smartphone market. Apple still retainedthe top spot banking on the huge success of the iPhone X launch during theholiday season.
The smartphone market in Japan
When it comes toJapan, however, there is only one king: Apple. In July 2017, Apple’s iPhone 7had a market share of 25.1 percent, distantly followed by the Apple iPhone SE,which took 7.4 percent of the market. Overall, Apple enjoyed almost 70% of theJapanese mobile market share in 2017 and this popularity is enduring for thelast 10 years. Following Apple comes Sony with its flagship Xperia XZs beingthe best-selling non-Apple phone, with a market share of 6.2 percent. Localplayers Sharp and Fujitsu to occupy a significant percentage of the smartphonemarket in Japan.
Conclusion
To conclude, it is clear here that Samsung and Apple have dominated the global smartphone market in 2017. It shall probably continue holding significant positions in 2018 as well.