Smartphone Vendor Market Share: Samsung and Apple Pull Away as Shipments Fall 22 Percent

Samsung leads Apple by 500,000 phones in the smallest third quarter in more than a decade

Samsung was the largest smartphone vendor in the world in the third quarter of 2026, but only just. Preliminary data from IDC, published on 14 October 2026, show Samsung shipped 57.8 million smartphones between July and September, a 22.6 percent share of the market. Apple shipped 57.3 million for a 22.4 percent share. The gap between the two, 500,000 units or 0.2 percentage points, is the narrowest third quarter lead Samsung has held in the IDC data of the past three years, and only just above the 0.1 point margin that IDC treats as a statistical tie.

Behind the two leaders, the Chinese vendors that dominate the mid range and budget segments all lost ground. Xiaomi kept third place with 30.7 million units and 12.0 percent, OPPO (which now reports realme and OnePlus inside its total) was fourth with 25.6 million and 10.0 percent, and vivo fifth with 19.1 million and 7.5 percent. Every other brand combined, including Transsion, Honor, Huawei, Motorola and Google, shipped 64.8 million phones, 25.4 percent of the total.

A two horse race: Samsung and Apple each shipped almost twice as many phones as third placed Xiaomi.

The ranking matters less for who is first than for how far the top two have pulled away. A year earlier Samsung and Apple together accounted for 36.9 percent of global shipments. In the third quarter of 2026 their combined share reached 45.0 percent, and the two companies shipped 115.1 million phones between them. Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo together shipped 75.4 million, down from 110.4 million a year before. For the long history of how these positions were won and lost since the Nokia era, see our record of smartphone vendor market share since 2009; this page concentrates on the current market and the forces that reshaped it in 2026.

Q3 2025 figures are the restated values published with the Q3 2026 release. OPPO includes OnePlus and realme for both years. Xiaomi includes Redmi and POCO; vivo includes iQOO.

Five companies now ship three in every four smartphones

Seen as a share of the whole market, the third quarter of 2026 was the most concentrated quarter in recent IDC data. The five largest vendors shipped 190.5 million of the 255.3 million phones sold into retail and carrier channels, or 74.6 percent. A year earlier the same five companies held 70.7 percent. The long tail of smaller brands, which has historically fed on cheap entry level devices, shrank faster than any named vendor: shipments by all other brands fell 32.5 percent, a loss of 31.2 million units.

Samsung plus Apple equals 45 percent: the two leaders shipped 115.1 million phones, far more than Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo combined at 75.4 million.

Concentration at the top is not new in itself. In fourth quarters, when new iPhones arrive, Apple alone regularly takes close to a quarter of the market. What is new in 2026 is that the concentration has held in quarters without an iPhone launch, and that it was driven by others shrinking rather than by the leaders growing. Samsung and Apple both shipped fewer phones than a year earlier; they simply lost much less volume than everyone else.

No vendor grew in the third quarter, but the losses were very uneven

Every one of the five largest vendors shipped fewer phones in the third quarter of 2026 than a year earlier. The size of the declines, however, split the industry in two. Apple fell 4.0 percent and Samsung 5.8 percent. Xiaomi fell 29.2 percent, vivo 31.5 percent and OPPO 34.5 percent, while the combined group of smaller brands lost 32.5 percent of its volume.

Two speeds: Apple and Samsung lost about 5 percent of their volume, the three big Chinese brands about 30 percent.

IDC analysts explain the gap with price positioning. Memory chips are a much larger share of the bill of materials in a phone that sells for 150 dollars than in one that sells for 1,000 dollars, so the rise in memory prices hit low cost portfolios hardest. Samsung and Apple, in the words of IDC, secured component supply early and sell most of their volume at prices where a memory cost increase can be absorbed or passed on. Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo depend far more on sub 200 dollar models in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and chose to cut volume rather than sell at a loss. IDC described Xiaomi as cutting low end volume deliberately, and Omdia notes that more than half of Xiaomi shipments are priced below 200 dollars.

In absolute terms the market lost 72.0 million units in a single year. Samsung accounted for 3.6 million of that and Apple for 2.4 million. Xiaomi lost 12.7 million, OPPO 13.5 million, vivo 8.8 million and the smaller brands 31.2 million. In other words, 92 percent of the lost volume came from outside the top two.

From growth in 2025 to the steepest fall on record in 2026

The third quarter collapse came after a year of modest growth. IDC counted 1.26 billion smartphone shipments in 2025, up 1.9 percent, with the fourth quarter of 2025 reaching 336.3 million units, the largest quarter in the eleven shown below. The first quarter of 2026 turned negative at minus 4.1 percent, the second quarter fell 7.4 percent, and the third quarter fell 22.0 percent, which IDC describes as the largest year on year decline it has recorded in any quarter.

Lowest third quarter in more than a decade: 255.3 million units is 72 million below the same quarter of 2025.

Seasonality explains part of the shape: shipments usually peak in the fourth quarter, when Apple launches new iPhones and retailers stock up for the holiday season, and dip in the first half. But the 2026 line breaks from that pattern. In 2025 the third quarter was 9.7 percent larger than the second; in 2026 it was 7.6 percent smaller. Counterpoint Research called the third quarter of 2026 the lowest third quarter in 14 years, and Omdia called it the lowest third quarter since 2013. A fuller history of total volumes is available in our dataset of global smartphone shipments by quarter.

The same supply shock is visible in neighbouring device categories. IDC reported a 20.1 percent fall in PC shipments in the third quarter of 2026, almost identical to the smartphone decline, as memory shortages and a hangover from earlier stock building weighed on both markets. Our pages on global PC shipments and tablet shipments by quarter track those markets.

Samsung wins the quarters, Apple wins the holidays

Over the eleven quarters from early 2024 to the third quarter of 2026, the IDC data show a stable rhythm. Samsung led in every first, second and third quarter. Apple led in every fourth quarter, when the new iPhone generation goes on sale, with shares of 23.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2024 and 24.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2025. Because Apple holiday quarters are so large, Apple also finished 2024 and 2025 as the largest vendor on a full year basis.

The gap is closing outside the holidays: Apple held 22.4 percent in a third quarter, a level it used to reach only in fourth quarters.

What changed in 2026 is the level, not the order. Both leaders have been climbing at the expense of everyone else. Samsung held between 15.7 and 20.1 percent in every quarter of 2024 and 2025, then 21.7 percent, 22.7 percent and 22.6 percent in the first three quarters of 2026. Apple, which used to sit at 16 to 19 percent outside holiday quarters, recorded 21.1 percent in the first quarter of 2026, 20.2 percent in the second and 22.4 percent in the third. Xiaomi moved the other way, from 14.2 percent in the second quarter of 2025 to between 11.2 and 12.0 percent since.

The third quarter of 2026 is unusual for Apple in another way. IDC noted that Apple streamlined its iPhone lineup in 2026 and did not launch a new base model in the autumn, which normally lifts September shipments. That Apple still came within 500,000 units of Samsung without that model says a lot about how much the rest of the market contracted. Apple results by region, which show the same iPhone strength in money terms, are tracked on our page of Apple quarterly revenue by region.

January to September 2026: Samsung 183 million, Apple 174 million

Adding up the three quarters published so far gives a clearer picture of the year than any single quarter. Using the IDC figures, the global market shipped 821.3 million smartphones in the first nine months of 2026, down 11.5 percent from 927.6 million in the same period of 2025. Samsung shipped 183.3 million (22.3 percent) and grew 1.8 percent. Apple shipped 174.1 million (21.2 percent) and grew 4.1 percent. Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo each lost between 20 and 25 percent.

BusinessStats calculation: sum of IDC quarterly figures (Q1 2026 preliminary from April 2026, Q2 2026 final from August 2026, Q3 2026 preliminary from October 2026; 2025 quarters as restated in the 2026 releases). Shares are calculated from the sums.

These cumulative numbers support what both IDC and Counterpoint Research expect for the full year: Samsung is on course to finish 2026 as the largest vendor for the first time since 2022, ending a three year run in which Apple led annual shipments. Counterpoint said so explicitly in its August 2026 forecast, titled with the expectation that Samsung would retake the number one position. The outcome still depends on the fourth quarter, when Apple shipped 77.5 million iPhones in 2024 and 81.3 million in 2025; to overtake Samsung on the year Apple would need to beat it by about 9.2 million units between October and December.

2025: Apple led for a third straight year with 247.8 million iPhones

The last complete year shows the market before the memory shortage. IDC counted 1,260.3 million smartphone shipments in 2025, up 1.9 percent from 1,236.3 million in 2024. Apple shipped a record 247.8 million iPhones for a 19.7 percent share and was the largest vendor for the third consecutive year. Samsung shipped 241.2 million (19.1 percent), its first annual increase after several years of decline, helped by the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and a refreshed Galaxy A series. Xiaomi was third with 165.3 million (13.1 percent), vivo fourth with 103.9 million (8.2 percent) and OPPO fifth with 102.0 million (8.1 percent).

Apple and Samsung grew, the rest stood still: the two leaders added 32.4 million units in 2025, while Xiaomi, vivo and OPPO together shipped 3.2 million fewer than in 2024.

Two details from 2025 foreshadowed 2026. First, the combined share of Apple and Samsung rose from 37 percent to 39 percent, which IDC linked to buyers moving toward more expensive phones. Second, Transsion, the maker of the TECNO, Infinix and itel brands, reached fourth place in the third quarter of 2025 with 29.2 million units and a 9.0 percent share, growing 13.6 percent on the strength of sub 200 dollar phones in Africa. A year later, as the next section shows, that low price segment was the one that broke.

Three trackers, one story, different decimals

Three research firms publish quarterly vendor rankings that the industry treats as reference points: IDC, Omdia (which absorbed the Canalys smartphone research in 2025) and Counterpoint Research. All three estimate sell in shipments, meaning phones shipped by manufacturers into retail, carrier and distributor channels, not phones bought by consumers. Each builds its numbers from its own mix of supply chain checks, channel data and company disclosures, so the figures never match exactly. For the third quarter of 2026 they agree on the order of the top five and on the size of the decline, and differ by up to two points on individual shares.

Same order, different decimals: the largest disagreement is Xiaomi, at 12 percent for IDC and Omdia and 10 percent for Counterpoint.

The differences become more visible in volume terms and over time. For the full year 2025 IDC counted 1,260.3 million shipments and Omdia 1,245.5 million, a gap of almost 15 million units. Both had Apple ahead of Samsung, but IDC by 6.6 million units (247.8 million against 241.2 million) and Omdia by only 1.5 million (240.6 million against 239.1 million). In the first quarter of 2026 the trackers even disagreed on the leader: IDC put Samsung first with 21.7 percent against 21.1 percent for Apple, while Counterpoint headlined that Apple led a first quarter for the first time, with 21.2 percent against 20.8 percent for Samsung.

"Not used" means the figure was not available in the public release we checked; "not published" means the tracker did not publish it in its public summary. Counterpoint Q2 2026 change is from its quarterly market share page.

For readers the practical rule is simple: compare vendors within one tracker, and compare trackers only on direction and order. That is why this page uses IDC for every ranking chart and time series, and shows Omdia and Counterpoint figures only side by side.

Why a memory shortage redistributed market share

The single cause behind the 2026 numbers is the cost of memory. Demand for high bandwidth memory and server DRAM from AI data centres has absorbed much of the capacity of the three large memory makers, and contract prices for the DRAM and NAND flash used in phones rose steeply from late 2025. In its third quarter release IDC said memory costs had risen about 350 percent since the previous year and were still rising, although the pace slowed to a low double digit increase from one quarter to the next, after jumps of roughly 50 to 100 percent in earlier quarters. The build out driving that demand is covered in our data centre statistics and our overview of artificial intelligence statistics.

For a premium phone, a few dozen extra dollars of memory is painful but survivable. For a phone that retails for under 100 dollars it can wipe out the margin entirely. IDC data show how quickly the bottom of the market disappeared: the sub 100 dollar segment shipped 173 million units in 2025, and shipments in that band fell almost 60 percent year on year in the second quarter of 2026. In April 2026 IDC reported price rises of 40 to 50 percent on some phones in emerging markets. Vendors responded by cutting entry level models, raising prices and shifting volume toward higher price bands.

Company filings show the other side of the same shift: fewer phones, but higher prices. Apple reported iPhone net sales of 54.3 billion dollars in its fiscal third quarter ended 27 June 2026, up 21.7 percent from 44.6 billion dollars a year earlier, even though IDC estimated Apple shipments rose by a much smaller 14.9 percent in the calendar second quarter. Over the first nine months of its fiscal year, iPhone revenue reached 196.5 billion dollars, up 22.4 percent. Samsung, by contrast, reported record group results of 171.5 trillion won in revenue and 89.5 trillion won in operating profit for the second quarter of 2026, almost entirely because of memory, while its phone business was squeezed by the same memory prices that lifted its chip division. Revenue comparisons across the largest technology groups are on our page of big tech revenue.

In China, Huawei is the vendor that is still growing

The global top five hides a different ranking in the largest single market. In China, IDC estimates that shipments fell 15.4 percent to about 57.9 million units in the third quarter of 2026, a decline that accelerated from the first half of the year. Huawei, which sells most of its phones at home, was the only large vendor with double digit growth: its shipments rose 17.3 percent and its share jumped from 15.2 percent to 21.1 percent, making it the clear market leader. Apple was second with 17.8 percent, followed by OPPO (15.5 percent), vivo (15.3 percent), Xiaomi (13.8 percent) and Honor (13.0 percent).

Huawei up, everyone else down: Huawei grew 17.3 percent in a Chinese market that shrank 15.4 percent.

Huawei growth reflects what IDC calls a broad range of form factors and disciplined pricing, as well as the maturing of its own HarmonyOS platform. IDC expects HarmonyOS phone shipments to nearly triple to about 51 million units worldwide in 2026, mostly in China. Globally Huawei grew 20.9 percent in the second quarter of 2026 according to IDC, but it does not appear in any global top five because its sales outside China remain small. Honor, which was spun off from Huawei in 2020, has the opposite profile: it lost 24.2 percent of its China volume in the third quarter but has been expanding abroad, with Omdia recording record shipments and 11 percent growth for Honor in 2025.

Apple shipments in China fell 4.3 percent in the third quarter, in line with its global decline, which IDC attributes to a smaller lineup without base models this year. Even so, Apple gained two points of share in China because domestic Android brands fell faster. The longer term contest between iOS, Android and HarmonyOS is tracked on our page of mobile operating system market share, and the spread of iOS versions on iOS version share.

Transsion and the end of the cheap smartphone

Transsion is the vendor most exposed to the 2026 shock and the least visible in global rankings. The Shenzhen based company sells TECNO, Infinix and itel phones mostly in Africa, South Asia and the Middle East, at prices that were often below 100 dollars. In IDC data it was the fifth largest vendor in the second quarter of 2025 with 25.1 million units and the fourth largest in the third quarter of 2025 with 29.2 million. Since the fourth quarter of 2025 it has not appeared in the IDC global top five in any quarter, and its shipments are included in the "Others" group that fell 32.5 percent in the third quarter of 2026.

Omdia data for Africa, the core Transsion market, show the mechanism. African smartphone shipments fell 7 percent in the second quarter of 2026, the first decline in three years. Shipments of sub 100 dollar phones fell 34 percent, and the average selling price rose by 41 dollars to 202 dollars. Transsion shipments in Africa fell 14 percent, while Samsung grew 15 percent and Honor also grew, and Xiaomi (minus 30 percent) and OPPO (minus 25 percent) fell further than Transsion. Omdia expects the African market to shrink 26 percent across 2026.

IDC forecasts in May 2026 pointed in the same direction, with the steepest regional declines in the Middle East and Africa (minus 23 percent), Central and Eastern Europe (minus 19 percent) and Asia Pacific excluding Japan and China (minus 14 percent). In the words of IDC vice president Francisco Jeronimo, the era of the cheap smartphone has ended. For millions of first time buyers in these regions, that means older devices kept longer, a growing second hand market and, for vendors, a smaller but more expensive market to compete in.

Forecasts point to the worst year on record for smartphone shipments

Forecasts for 2026 have been cut three times as the memory shortage deepened. IDC projected a 12.9 percent decline in February 2026, 13.9 percent in May and 16.7 percent in its update of 26 August 2026, which puts full year shipments at just over 1 billion units. By our calculation from the IDC growth rate and its 2025 base, that is roughly 1.05 billion phones, about 210 million fewer than in 2025. Counterpoint Research forecast a 14 percent decline in August 2026. Both describe 2026 as the sharpest annual fall in smartphone history.

Emerging markets take the biggest hit: IDC projected the Middle East and Africa to fall nearly four times faster than North America.

Market value tells a different story from units. IDC expects the average selling price of a smartphone to jump 27.6 percent to a record 581 dollars in 2026, which would lift the total value of the market by 6.3 percent to about 613 billion dollars despite the volume collapse. Revenue growth on falling units fits the Apple and Samsung filings described above, and is the reason market share in units and market share in value now diverge more than ever. Our dataset on the technology and telecom sector collects related market size figures.

For vendor shares, the implication is that 2026 will end with the most concentrated market in the history of the smartphone. IDC expects iOS alone to reach 23.6 percent of global shipments, and Samsung is on track for a share above 22 percent. If both forecasts hold, two companies will account for close to half of all smartphones shipped worldwide, compared with 39 percent in 2025. Smaller Android vendors that survived on thin margins in the budget segment face the hardest choices, and IDC warned in October 2026 that inventory could build up heading into 2027 if demand stays weak.

What vendor market share measures, and what it does not

Vendor market share in this report is the share of worldwide smartphone unit shipments, as estimated by research firms. Four definitions shape every figure on the page. First, shipments are sell in: phones shipped by manufacturers to operators, retailers and distributors, not phones activated by consumers. Second, the numbers count branded devices only and exclude phones a company makes for other brands. Third, a company is counted at the level of its current parent, which is why OPPO includes OnePlus and realme in 2026 data. Fourth, only new devices are counted, so refurbished and used phones are excluded.

Market share in units is also different from share of revenue or profit. Apple sells about one in five smartphones but a much larger share of industry revenue because its average selling price is several times the market average. Readers comparing smartphone makers with the wider technology sector can use our ranking of the largest companies by market capitalization, where Apple and Samsung both feature, and the Apple topic overview. Shipments of other personal devices follow similar rules and are covered in our wearables shipments data.

Finally, all 2026 figures here are preliminary. IDC, Omdia and Counterpoint revise their estimates as companies report results and channel data arrive, and revisions of one or two million units for a large vendor are common. The quarterly fourth quarter 2026 data, which will decide the full year ranking, are usually published in mid January, so the 2026 ranking will be confirmed in January 2027.

Smartphone vendor market share in eight numbers

Questions about smartphone market share by vendor