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Apple Accounts for Nearly 1/3 of Holiday Smartphone Sales in US

In the three months following September's launch of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, Apple's smartphone sales in the U.S. surpassed the sales of Samsung's top Android devices, according to a new report from the market research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

In fact, the iPhone 7 (pictured above) and the iPhone 7 Plus, along with the iPhone 6s, accounted for 31.3 percent of all smartphone sales at the start of the U.S. holiday shopping season, the report said. The fourth and fifth most popular smartphones, Samsung's Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, took 28.9 percent of U.S. sales during that period, according to the report.

Kantar Worldpanel ComTech's figures also show that Android sales during those three months dropped not only in the U.S. but in Great Britain and France as well. Meanwhile, the iPhone is now "the most successful product of all time," with Apple's total earnings from iOS devices and services likely to pass the $1 trillion mark later this year, according to a separate analysis released yesterday by Asymco, a firm that covers the mobile industry.

Declining Android Sales in U.S.

The three months ending in November marked the sixth consecutive quarter of declining Android smartphone sales in the U.S., according to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. Compared to the end of November 2015, Android's share of the U.S. smartphone market dropped from 60.4 percent to 55.3 percent.

During the Black Friday period that kicked off the 2016 holiday shopping season, Verizon alone was responsible for nearly one-quarter of all U.S. smartphone sales, according to the Kantar report. Verizon promoted sales of both Apple and Samsung phones through a variety of free trade-in and purchase offers.

In China, by contrast, Android smartphones continued to dominate the market, with nearly 80 percent of devices sold between September and November. However, the top brands in China are not from South Korea's Samsung but rather devices from Chinese companies. Huawei alone accounted for 25 percent of all smartphone sales in China, followed by Xiaomi and Oppo.

Trillion-Dollar 'iOS Empire'

Android sales in the U.K., meanwhile, rose by 9.1 percent in the three months ending in November. Apple devices also performed well across key European markets, however. Kantar analysts attributed both companies' increased shares to the ongoing decline of Windows smartphones.

"The holiday period is always strong for Apple, but it remains to be seen if demand for the latest devices will level out in the first quarter of 2017," Kantar's European business unit director Dominic Sunnebo said yesterday in a statement.

Meanwhile, Horace Dediu, founder of Asymco, said yesterday that his latest study of Apple sales show that the iPhone has now sold at least 1.2 billion units since the first device was unveiled 10 years ago. The iPhone is just part of what is now an "iOS empire" whose combined sales are likely to pass 2 billion units by the end of 2018, he added.

"The revenues from iOS product sales will reach $980 billion by middle of this year," Dediu noted yesterday in a blog post. "This means that iOS will have generated over $1 trillion in revenues for Apple sometime this year."

Dediu added that Apple's iOS empire doesn't appear likely to be disrupted or diminished anytime soon.

"As we look toward the second decade of the iPhone, the expectation isn't one of another 'big bang' but a process of continuous improvement," he said. "The market is nearing saturation so the goals must be to capture more switchers from Android. Apple has achieved this with the Mac: survival, persistence and eventual redemption."

Read more on: Apple, iPhone, iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 6, Samsung, Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, Android, Huawei, Technology News
Source: Apple Accounts for Nearly 1/3 of Holiday Smartphone Sales in US

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