Global Smartphone Shipments Rise 2.3% in Q4 2025 As Apple And Samsung Lead Growth
Summary
The global smartphone market demonstrated resilience in Q4 2025, with shipments reaching 336.3 million units and growing 2.3% year-over-year, according to preliminary data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) released on January 13, 2026. This growth, achieved despite unprecedented memory chip shortages and macroeconomic headwinds, reflects a market increasingly dominated by premium devices from Apple and Samsung. For the full year 2025, global shipments totaled 1.26 billion units with 1.9% growth, marking the second consecutive year of market recovery after industry contraction in 2023 and 2024.
Apple reclaimed the top position globally for the third consecutive year, achieving record-setting Q4 shipments of 81.3 million units (24.2% market share, +4.9% YoY) and full-year shipments of 247.8 million units (19.7% share, +6.3% YoY). Samsung secured second place with 61.2 million units in Q4 (18.2% share, +18.3% YoY)—the highest growth rate among top-five vendors—and 241.2 million units for the full year (19.1% share, +7.9% YoY). Together, Apple and Samsung's combined market share expanded to approximately 43% of global shipments, underscoring an accelerating premiumization trend that has fundamentally reshaped competitive dynamics in the smartphone industry.
Market Overview and Growth Dynamics
Q4 2025 Performance
The fourth quarter of 2025 marked a turning point for the smartphone industry, with growth concentrated among premium vendors despite unprecedented supply chain pressures. Total Q4 shipments of 336.3 million units represented a modest but meaningful 2.3% increase compared to Q4 2024's 328.8 million units. This performance is particularly notable given the convergence of multiple headwinds: a severe global memory chip shortage, ongoing tariff volatility, and consumer caution following earlier-year supply chain disruptions.
The quarter's growth was substantially driven by seasonal holiday demand, strong pull-in demand as consumers anticipated price increases due to component costs, and exceptional performance from flagship product launches—particularly Apple's iPhone 17 series and Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold7/Flip7 foldable devices. Inventory management also improved significantly in Q4 2025, with vendors correcting excesses accumulated in earlier quarters, creating a healthier supply-demand equilibrium.
Full-Year 2025 Results
For the complete 2025 calendar year, global smartphone shipments reached 1,260.3 million units, representing 1.9% year-over-year growth compared to 1,236.3 million units in 2024. This performance reflects what analysts characterize as an uneven recovery: the first half of 2025 remained relatively flat, hampered by tariff uncertainty and cautious consumer sentiment, while the second half accelerated driven by emerging market growth, flagship product launches, and the COVID-era device replacement cycle reaching an inflection point.
The full-year result validates the market's shift toward premiumization and selective growth in emerging economies, with traditional developed markets showing mature behavior. IDC analysts noted that despite the challenges, "the global smartphone market demonstrated remarkable resilience, closing 2025 with solid year-over-year growth" despite tariff volatility, supply chain disruptions, and macroeconomic headwinds.
Competitive Landscape: Apple And Samsung Dominance
Apple's Record Performance
Apple's Q4 2025 achievement represents a historic inflection point in smartphone competition. With 81.3 million units shipped and a 24.2% market share, Apple achieved its highest-ever quarterly shipment volume, surpassing Samsung decisively and reversing a trend of Samsung leadership that had persisted since 2010. This performance was driven overwhelmingly by exceptional demand for the iPhone 17 series, which exceeded analyst expectations following its September 2025 launch.
Metric | Q4 2025 | Full Year 2025 | YoY Growth
Shipments | 81.3M units | 247.8M units | 6.3%
Market Share | 24.2% | 19.7% | —
Prior Year (Q4 2024) | 77.5M units | 233.1M units | —
Apple's success rested on several critical factors. First, the iPhone 17 base model emerged as a "sleeper hit," offering significant value improvements over its predecessor at unchanged pricing. The base storage capacity doubled to 256GB (from 128GB), and the Ultra Wide camera was upgraded to a 48MP Fusion module delivering 4x the resolution of the iPhone 16's equivalent. These incremental upgrades—while historically modest by Apple standards—created a compelling value proposition that resonated across market segments.
Geographically, Apple demonstrated exceptional performance recovery in China, a market critical to full-year performance. IDC revised Apple's China Q4 forecast upward from 9% to 17% year-over-year growth, powered by ranks of more than 20% market share in October and November 2025. This reversal transformed what would have been a 1% full-year decline in China into a 3% gain, fundamentally altering the company's 2025 trajectory. Strong performance also materialized in developed markets (US, Western Europe) and emerging markets including India, Japan, and Southeast Asia, where older-generation iPhone models continued to perform exceptionally well.
For the full year, Apple shipped 247.8 million units—a record in the company's history—with total revenue forecast to exceed $261 billion, representing 7.2% year-over-year growth. Apple captured 1 in every 5 phones shipped globally in 2025, cementing its position as the world's largest smartphone vendor by shipment volume.
Samsung's Strategic Ascent
While Apple led in volume, Samsung's Q4 2025 performance may prove more strategically significant. With 61.2 million units shipped (18.2% market share), Samsung achieved 18.3% year-over-year growth—the highest growth rate among the top five vendors. This performance demonstrates that Samsung's portfolio strategy, spanning the budget Galaxy A series through ultra-premium Galaxy Z Fold/Flip devices, enabled the company to capture growth across market segments despite intense competition from Chinese vendors.
Metric | Q4 2025 | Full Year 2025 | YoY Growth
Shipments | 61.2M units | 241.2M units | 7.9%
Market Share | 18.2% | 19.1% | —
Prior Year (Q4 2024) | 51.7M units | 223.5M units | —
Samsung's growth was anchored by exceptional performance in the budget and mid-range segment, particularly the Galaxy A17 4G and A17 5G models. These devices represent Samsung's most successful budget-segment smartphone in years, delivering premium design elements (glass sandwich construction, AMOLED displays) with exceptional battery efficiency and a market-leading six-year operating system update commitment. The Galaxy A17 achieved a battery efficiency score superior to comparable competitors, offering reliable daily performance without premium-tier specifications, thereby capturing price-sensitive consumers unwilling to compromise on brand reliability and software support.
Simultaneously, Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold7 and Flip7 foldable devices drove exceptional growth in the premium segment, with Q3 2025 representing a record-setting quarter for global foldable shipments (+14% YoY). Samsung's foldables accounted for the majority of the 2.5% global foldable smartphone market share achieved in Q3 2025, positioning the company at the forefront of the next-generation device category.
Market Share Concentration and Premiumization Trend
Top Five Vendor Performance
The competitive hierarchy in Q4 2025 reveals a market increasingly bifurcated between premium leaders and increasingly pressured mid-tier vendors:
Vendor | Q4 Shipments | Q4 Share | YoY Growth | Full Year Share
Apple | 81.3M | 24.2% | +4.9% | 19.7%
Samsung | 61.2M | 18.2% | +18.3% | 19.1%
Xiaomi | 37.8M | 11.2% | -11.4% | 13.1%
vivo | 27.0M | 8.0% | -0.4% | 8.2%
Oppo | 26.9M | 8.0% | +7.6% | 8.1%
Others | 102.1M | 30.4% | -2.6% | 31.7%
Total | 336.3M | 100.0% | +2.3% | 100.0%
Apple and Samsung's combined market share expanded from 37% in full-year 2024 to 39% in 2025, a two-percentage-point gain that masks more significant dynamics. Within Q4 2025, Apple and Samsung controlled 42.4% of global shipments, indicating that the premium market concentration is accelerating on a sequential basis. This expansion came at the direct expense of mid-tier vendors: Xiaomi declined 11.4% in Q4 2025, vivo declined marginally (0.4%), and the broader "Others" category declined 2.6%.
This premiumization dynamic reflects fundamental consumer shifts. As IDC analysts noted, "premium vendors Apple and Samsung were the primary growth drivers, posting the highest growth rates amongst the top five at 6.3% and 7.9%, respectively," with both companies benefiting from "sustained premium growth" and consumer demand for innovative form factors (foldables) and advanced features (AI integration, high-quality imaging).
Emerging Market Dynamics
Despite premium market concentration in developed markets, emerging markets demonstrated divergent patterns. In China, the full year 2025 witnessed a reversal of the smartphone market's five-year decline, with government subsidy programs reinvigorating device upgrades. However, Huawei reclaimed the full-year lead with 46.7 million units (16.4% market share), narrowly surpassing Apple's 46.2 million units (16.2%). This represents the first full-year defeat for Apple in China since 2020, reflecting Huawei's success with domestically manufactured HarmonyOS-based processors that enabled the company to circumvent US sanctions impact.
In India, the competitive dynamic remains distinctly different, with vivo commanding 18.3% market share, followed by Oppo (13.9%), Samsung (12.6%), and Apple (10.4%). Apple's relatively modest 10.4% share in the world's second-largest smartphone market underscores the company's premium positioning and ongoing challenges in price-sensitive segments, despite improving performance following new product launches.
Africa recorded exceptional growth of +25% year-over-year in Q3 2025 (the most recent quarterly data), driven primarily by Transsion (the region's dominant vendor following inventory adjustment completion) and other Chinese brands emphasizing value-segment devices. Asia-Pacific (excluding China) achieved +5% year-over-year growth, posting the highest quarterly volume since Q4 2021 and indicating sustained demand in the region.
Technology and Product Innovation Drivers
iPhone 17 Series Success
The iPhone 17 series' exceptional performance resulted from an unusually attractive product evolution. Apple's base iPhone 17 doubled storage from 128GB to 256GB while maintaining price parity with its predecessor—a value upgrade that historically has driven strong consumer enthusiasm. The upgrade included improvements to the rear camera system (48MP Ultra Wide sensor), enhanced battery technology, and a refined aluminum unibody design.
The series also included the iPhone Air, a new portfolio entry positioned between the base model and Pro variants, with a notably slimmer form factor that generated substantial marketing appeal and served as a portfolio showcasing device. This stratified approach allowed Apple to capture demand across price tiers while maintaining high average selling prices, with the iPhone Air introducing a new premium sub-category beneath the Pro lineup.
Samsung Galaxy A Series And Foldable Momentum
Samsung's success in Q4 2025 reflected both defensive (Galaxy A series in budget segments) and offensive (Galaxy Z foldables) strategies. The Galaxy A17 emerged as the brand's most successful budget device in years, leveraging premium construction (glass sandwich design, AMOLED display), exceptional battery efficiency (supporting 6 years of OS updates), and optical image stabilization—features previously exclusive to mid-range or premium devices.
Foldable smartphones achieved a record quarterly volume in Q3 2025 (+14% YoY), with Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold7 and Flip7 dominating the category. Foldables represented 2.5% of global smartphone shipments in Q3 2025, indicating meaningful traction in premium segments. The category is projected to grow at a 30.59% compound annual growth rate from 2025 to 2030, expanding from USD 31.3 billion in 2025 to USD 118.87 billion by 2030.
Headwinds And Market Challenges
Memory Chip Shortage Crisis
A critical development emerged in late 2025 that will reshape 2026 market dynamics: an unprecedented global shortage of memory chips (DRAM and NAND), driven by rapid expansion of AI infrastructure workloads by technology giants (Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon). Major memory manufacturers—Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron—have redirected production and investment toward AI-focused memory technologies at the expense of consumer device memory supplies.
This shift creates severe consequences for the smartphone industry. Memory components represent 15-20% of bill of materials for mid-range devices and 10-15% for flagships. As memory prices surge (projections indicate another 50% increase through 2026), original equipment manufacturers face difficult choices: absorb costs (squeezing margins), pass costs to consumers (raising prices), or reduce specifications (compromising product appeal).
IDC projections indicate that smartphone average selling prices will rise 6.9% in 2026—nearly double prior forecasts. This price increase reflects memory cost escalation and represents a fundamental reversal of the smartphone industry's decade-long trend of democratizing premium specifications across price tiers. Budget device vendors (Honor, Oppo, Xiaomi) operating with thin profit margins face particular pressure, as they lack the scale advantages of Apple and Samsung in securing favorable component pricing.
Market Contraction Forecast For 2026
The memory shortage's impact extends beyond pricing to volumes. IDC's December 2025 update significantly revised its 2026 forecast, projecting market contraction ranging from a moderate 2.9% to a pessimistic 5.2%, compared to the previous forecast of +0.9% growth. In a moderate scenario, smartphone shipments would decline approximately 37 million units (roughly the equivalent of Xiaomi's current annual shipments).
Counterpoint Research has similarly revised forecasts downward, with research director Tarun Pathak noting that "the global smartphone market is set to soften in 2026 amid DRAM/NAND shortages and rising component costs," with shipment estimates revised down by 3%. The shortage is expected to persist through 2026, with relief potentially arriving in 2027 as memory supply gradually normalizes.
Market Outlook For 2026 and Beyond
Pricing Pressure and Average Selling Price Increases
Despite projected volume declines, average selling prices (ASP) are forecast to increase. IDC projects global smartphone ASP rising to $465 in 2026, pushing the total market value to a record $578.9 billion despite unit shipment declines. This represents a reversal of historical smartphone industry dynamics, where volume typically drives revenue. Instead, 2026 will be characterized by "premiumization through constraint"—price increases driven by supply-side component costs rather than demand-side quality improvements.
Regionally, pricing impacts will vary significantly. North America, where consumers typically utilize carrier financing and trade-in programs, may experience more modest real price increases despite nominal ASP growth. India and Latin America, with price-sensitive consumer bases and limited financing penetration, face more substantial real price impacts, potentially constraining demand in these critical growth markets.
Industry Consolidation And Scale Advantages
The memory shortage and component cost dynamics are already triggering industry consolidation among mid-tier vendors. Notably, Oppo announced integration of realme as a subsidiary brand effective January 2026, with OnePlus being repositioned to focus on online channels and specific geographies. This consolidation reflects recognition that scale and supply chain leverage have become critical competitive advantages. Larger vendors (Apple, Samsung) can secure favorable component pricing through long-term contracts and purchase volume, while smaller vendors face margin pressure or market exit.
IDC analysts emphasized that "OEM size and scale will play a major factor in success, with larger players better suited to secure favorable component prices" in the constrained 2026 environment. This dynamic suggests ongoing market concentration favoring Apple and Samsung, with mid-tier Chinese vendors increasingly pressured.
Full-Year 2026 Guidance
Based on available forecasts, the smartphone industry faces a challenging 2026 characterized by:
- Volume contraction of 0.9% to 5.2% depending on severity of memory shortage.
- ASP growth of 3-8% depending on scenario (moderate to pessimistic).
- Net revenue impact likely positive despite volume declines, supporting record or near-record market value.
- Competitive consolidation with emphasis on scale and supply chain negotiating power.
- Product mix shifts toward premium devices and foldables (which face less component cost pressure)
The smartphone industry's trajectory through 2026 will be substantially determined by how quickly memory production capacity expands and whether demand for AI infrastructure memory begins normalizing. Until that rebalancing occurs, consumers and vendors alike should expect elevated pricing and constrained device availability, particularly in budget and mid-range segments.
Conclusion
The 2.3% growth achieved in global smartphone shipments during Q4 2025 masks a fundamentally restructured market. Apple and Samsung's combined market share expansion to 43% reflects accelerating premiumization that has been underway for several years but reached critical mass in 2025. The emergence of exceptional demand for premium form factors (foldables growing at 14% YoY), advanced AI-integrated devices, and high-end imaging capabilities indicates that consumers in developed markets are increasingly willing to pay substantial premiums for differentiated experiences.
This premium market strength coexists with severe headwinds emerging from the memory chip shortage crisis. The shift of memory production capacity toward AI infrastructure has created an unprecedented supply-demand imbalance that will drive substantial price increases throughout 2026, potentially constraining growth in price-sensitive emerging markets. The industry is experiencing a structural transition from an era of declining device costs (which characterized 2015-2024) to an era of cost inflation driven by supply-side constraints.
For consumers in emerging markets like India (where Apple commands only 10.4% share), these dynamics portend higher device costs and fewer budget-segment options. For device manufacturers, the imperative is increasingly clear: scale and supply chain negotiating power are now dominant competitive advantages, with mid-tier vendors facing margin pressures that trigger consolidation toward larger regional or global players. The smartphone market's next chapter will be written by vendors that successfully navigate component scarcity and cost inflation while maintaining sufficient innovation and marketing to sustain premium positioning.