For the first time in five years, the launch of the 5G-capable iPhone 12 series has propelled Apple back atop their rightful throne as the world’s largest smartphone maker.
Nic Fildes for Financial TImes:
According to the research firm Gartner, Apple sold almost 80m phones in the final three months of 2020 following the launch of the iPhone 12, overtaking Samsung to become the world’s largest smartphone maker for the first time since 2016.
Huawei suffered a sharp slide, with smartphone sales down 41 per cent in the quarter due to sanctions imposed by the US government.
Annette Zimmerman, lead analyst for Apple at Gartner, said that the 15% rise in Apple’s sales in the fourth quarter showed that the company had benefited from an “upgrade super-cycle” triggered by millions of consumers who had waited for the new 5G iPhone.
She said that the momentum would likely continue into the first quarter of 2021, in which Chinese new year falls, and further into the year as Apple’s sales grow in line with a recovering market.
Gartner: Worldwide Top 5 Smartphone Sales to End Users by Vendor in 4Q20 (Thousands of Units)
Source: Gartner (February 2021)
MacDailyNews Take: Apple is again the world’s largest smartphone maker, which makes sense sine Apple invented the smartphone, not bunch of South Korean / Chinese knockoff peddlers and an online ad-tracker masquerading as a search engine.
We first began talking about and expecting this 5G Mother of All iPhone Upgrade Cycles™ to arrive in fall 2020, back on August 18, 2019 (when, by the way, AAPL traded at $50.95).
Unfortunately, Wall Street no longer appears to be interested in the smartphone market possibly because it’s tapped out. It’s EVs, video streaming and cryptomining hardware that excites big investors nowadays. Smartphones are likely considered old tech in a market of limited growth. I think the pandemic has changed the way big investors think about tech companies. It’s obvious even The Cloud has become far more important than smartphones with so many people working from home. That’s what somewhat puzzles me about the excitement over EVs considering less people should be driving, but it may be considered a longer-term play with potentially huge gains for big investors. Apple may be seen as falling too far behind in tech to be worthwhile owning although I hope this isn’t the case. It’s a scary scenario if Wall Street is only interested in Apple for working on a potential AppleCar. It’s just that Apple isn’t even an automaker, so that sort of thinking seems rather screwy to me.
Some EVs are designed to be backup power sources for your home. Maybe that plays a part in the interest in EVs’ future.