The secret of Apple’s iPhone success: it’s not about selling more, it’s about selling better
It’s hard to overestimate the importance of the smartphone market: beyond allowing us to talk anytime, anyplace and just about anywhere, since January 9, 2007 when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, it is the portable computer we all carry in our pockets and use most frequently. It is the absolute star of consumer electronics, the most important interface for the largest number of people, and a market that is a barometer for many things.
The smartphone market is dominated by the Android operating system, which is shared by many manufacturers and currently accounts for around 72% of the market. Its most important competitor is iOS, exclusive to Apple, which has 27.6%. The rest are basically rounding errors. When analyzing by brand, and given the dilution brought about by the number of competitors using Android, Apple emerges as the most relevant competitor: IDC data from the last quarter of 2022 shows that Apple dominates roughly a quarter of the market, while the second competitor, Samsung, has a 19.4% share, followed by a number of Chinese brands: Xiaomi with 11%, Oppo with 8.4%, and Vivo with 7.6%. The missing 29.4% of the market is largely fragmented and falls into the Other category.
