The champ is up, the first runner-up is down
While that may not sound like a very significant change, with both Samsung and Apple’s market shares dropping from 33 and 27 percent respectively at the beginning of last year to 32 and 25 percent now, the evolution of the two’s regional shipment figures should definitely worry the Cupertino-based silver medalist.
We’re talking a solid 11 percent bump for Xiaomi and absolutely mind-blowing 59 and 67 percent boosts in Realme and Honor’s shipment scores across Europe. The “others” category also made decent 10 percent year-on-year progress, despite the legal struggles of Oppo (including OnePlus), which used to be ranked in the region’s top five prior to this quarter.
So what went wrong for Apple and right for (almost) everyone else?
One of the key reasons why Samsung made good progress in Q1 2024 in Europe and Apple failed to keep up is fairly predictable, having to do with the newness (and charm) of the aforementioned Galaxy S24 family and the “oldness” of the 2023-released iPhone 15 series.
As for the European smartphone market as a whole, its 10 percent growth in Q1 2024 may sound remarkable (because it most definitely is), but it’s important to keep in mind that it comes on the back of a string of quarterly declines that started in Q3 2021. Sooner or later, that string had to end, but it doesn’t mean the market is healed now all of a sudden and ready to return to its pre-pandemic figures.
Instead, analysts expect “low single digit” progress for the rest of 2024, which is obviously better than seeing the market continue to shrink but it’s not enough to put smartphone manufacturers completely at ease.
