A new analyst note from Gartner today estimates how the global smartphone market performed during the June quarter. While we already knew Apple’s iPhone shipments were likely close to flat based on the company’s reported quarterly revenue, today’s analyst note underscores how well iPhone performed relatively speaking as the global market saw a big 20% decline.
Apple had a record-breaking June quarter thanks to big growth in almost every product category except for iPhone where it just saw 1.6% revenue growth YoY. That painted the picture that iPhone shipments were probably close to the same YoY. In a normal year, that would be more concerning but that result came amid the global pandemic.
A new report today from Gartner highlights just how impressive iPhone shipments were during Q2 (Apple’s fiscal Q3) this year. While Samsung retained the top spot for shipping the most smartphones globally at just over 54 million, that was a 27% drop YoY for the June Quarter. Huawei shipped 54 million units as well and saw a 6.8% decline for the quarter.
Meanwhile, Apple shipped an estimated 38 million iPhones during the quarter and barely missed matching 2019’s performance for the period with a 0.4% decline according to Gartner’s numbers.
Coming in fourth was Xiaomi, shipping 26 million smartphones which was a 21.5% decline for the quarter.
Gartner estimates that Apple took 13% of the global smartphone market for the June quarter by shipping 38 million iPhones.
Gartner’s VP of research Annette Zimmermann gave credit to the iPhone SE and an improved business environment in China for helping buoy Apple’s smartphone shipments.
“Apple’s iPhone sales fared better in the quarter than most smartphone vendors in the market and also grew sales quarter-over-quarter,” said Annette Zimmermann, research vice president at Gartner. “The improved business environment in China helped Apple achieve growth in the country. In addition, the introduction of the new iPhone SE encouraged users of older phones upgrade their smartphones.”
