Apple’s popular iPhone 12 series, although now superseded as the flagship range by the just announced iPhone 13 series, continued to dominate the worldwide smartphone market in the second quarter of 2021, according to recent research from Strategy Analytics’ Smartphone Model Tracker (SMT) service. In particular, the base iPhone 12, the 12 Pro, and the 12 Pro Max stood head and shoulders above other smartphone models in terms of shipments, including the older iPhone 11 and Xiaomi’s Redmi 9A. The latter two models had just below 2% market share globally in unit-volume terms, while the top-3 iPhone 12 series models ranged between roughly 3% and 5% market share each.
How does the situation look in terms of revenue, then? It’s even more of a landslide for the same top-3 iPhone models in Q2’21, with the iPhone 12 taking some 13% of all smartphone revenue globally just by itself, and the 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max following at just below 12% and 11% respectively. So, all in all, these three models accounted for more than 35% of all smartphone revenue. The put things into perspective, the exhibit below shows the top-10 revenue-generating smartphone models globally as of Q2’21.
The first non-Apple device on the list is the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G, part of Samsung’s latest flagship line-up launched in January this year, and indeed, that model accounted for just over 2% of global smartphone revenue. So, if it’s this hard to challenge Apple for revenue, does anyone else besides Samsung even stand a change?
Interestingly, there’s a Vivo model in the top-10 as well, the iQOO 7 5G, earning just above the 1% mark, which is still a lot of revenue for a single smartphone model. That smartphone is not even a high-end model, its average trade price sitting firmly below the US$400 mark, putting it in the upper mid-range price band of $300-399. Furthermore, just outside of the top-10 shown here are also Xiaomi models belonging mostly to mid-range price bands that are also major revenue generators. Hence, while the high-end looks to be increasingly dominated by Apple and to a lesser extent by Samsung, there are major revenue opportunities particularly in the upper mid-range price bands.
Interested in more price-tier analysis of smartphones globally or in any of the 88 countries and 6 regions worldwide covered by SMT? Clients of our service can access the analysis here.