Apple moved to the top of the global smartphone vendor ranking with 22% market share in Q4 2021, and registered record-breaking quarterly earnings on the back of great performance in China and other emerging markets.

Apple was successful in the historically challenging for the company emerging markets, due to competitive pricing strategy and solid channel promotions. The iPhone has always been an inspirational device, but consumers from economically unstable regions often need additional incentives to spend on premium devices.

Despite component shortages, Apple’s full-year 2021 shipments went up +11% YoY. More impressively, the company’s 2021 volume growth is even higher than the pre-Covid 2019 level with +16% over the two-year period.

Apple has managed to masterfully navigate over the most challenging period in the smartphone industry, where a combination of saturating markets, the Covid pandemic and component shortages wreaked havoc in the industry.