Apple Increases Share of U.S. Smartphone Activations in Q2

Tuesday July 17, 2018 1:21 PM PDT by Juli Clover
During the second quarter of 2018, spanning from April to June, Apple's iPhones accounted for 36 percent of total U.S. smartphone activations, an improvement over last year's numbers where iPhone activations accounted for just over 30 percent of total activations, according to new numbers shared today by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners [PDF].

More customers are choosing iPhone over Samsung devices this year, and Apple's higher number of activations came at Samsung's expense. During the quarter, Samsung devices were also responsible for 36 percent of new activations, but for Samsung, that's a solid decline from last year.

"Apple improved in part at Samsung's expense, whose share of activations declined relative to both last quarter and last year," said Mike Levin, Partner and Co-Founder of CIRP. "In a quarter without any significant phone launches, Samsung had market share only equal to Apple's. A year ago, Samsung had a considerably greater share of sales."

Apple devices and Samsung devices are the dominant brands, due to ongoing consolidation of the U.S. market. LG and Motorola, for example, have lost ground to Apple and Samsung over the course of the last year.

When it comes to operating systems, iOS and Android are, by far, the dominant operating systems in use. iOS accounted for 36 percent of activations during the quarter, while Android, which runs on an array of different smartphones from multiple manufacturers, accounted for 63 percent of U.S. activations.


Compared to last year, iOS's share of activations grew, with CIRP citing increased customer loyalty to their operating system of choice. Given the sheer number of Android devices compared to iOS devices, it's not surprising Android devices are responsible for approximately two thirds of activations.

Consumer Intelligence Research Partners regularly shares these surveys to monitor the state of the smartphone market. Findings are based on a survey of 500 subjects who activated new or used phones during the April to June 2018 period.
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KPandian1
13 weeks ago
The colors are reversed in the second graph - had me stumped for a bit.
Rating: 6 Votes
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fairuz
13 weeks ago

Wow, that’s really rough for Samsung who literally JUST released the s9. No surprises though since it was practically the same phone as the s8. Also a lot of other Android phones like the pixel 2 are quickly becoming more attrative options than anything Samsung is putting out these days. It seems that gimmicks aren’t selling as well as they once were

Funny thing is the Samsung phone upgrades are more important than the iPhone ones because you get stuck on an old, vulnerable Android version pretty quickly if you don't get a new phone.
Rating: 3 Votes
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acorntoy
13 weeks ago
Only 500 people were interviewed? That’s a ridiculously small sample size for something they then try to translate to millions.
Rating: 2 Votes
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69Mustang
13 weeks ago

Wow, that’s really rough for Samsung who literally JUST released the s9. No surprises though since it was practically the same phone as the s8. Also a lot of other Android phones like the pixel 2 are quickly becoming more attrative options than anything Samsung is putting out these days. It seems that gimmicks aren’t selling as well as they once were

Hmmm. Did Sammy really just release the S9 or did it go a little more like this:
Samsung had 42% activations in the Mar QTR - the quarter where they released the S9. Apple had 31% during that QTR. The next QTR when they had nothing new, Sammy lost 6% share of activations while Apple gained 5%. What that tells me is Apple has more stable sales year round. I think both companies know that. Probably why Apple typically has a single Fall intro and Samsung has a Spring and a Fall intro approx 6 mths apart to keep sales from ebbing and flowing too much.

Google's Pixels are akin to Microsoft's Surfaces. High brand awareness, low actual sales. Neither has ever been out of the "Other" categories. Neither probably will be either... at least for a long time. I personally like both brands, but that doesn't change the fact that they are more brand than sales.

tl;dr Samsung and Apple lead. Sammy didn't have it as rough as you seem to think.
Rating: 1 Votes
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69Mustang
13 weeks ago

First of all chill out, this was not meant to be an argument. Second of all the title of the article is literally “Apple Increases share of of US Smartphone Activations in Q2”. Also the data table you’re referring to is mislabeled, as stated by an above commenter. Samsung and Apple should be switched, or else it would be saying that the s9 launch was stronger than the s8 launch, which is definitely not true by any means

It's a discussion. One which you may discontinue at any time. No one is forcing you to reply. No one claimed the data is mislabeled. Please go back and read what KPandian1 actually stated. He said the colors are reversed in the second graph - making it a confusing read. I hope you realize that switching the Apple and Samsung data would mean Samsung had more December quarter activations than Apple. December. In the US. Apple's largest quarter every year. That would be darn near impossible.
Rating: 1 Votes
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Jakewilk
13 weeks ago
Wow, that’s really rough for Samsung who literally JUST released the s9. No surprises though since it was practically the same phone as the s8. Also a lot of other Android phones like the pixel 2 are quickly becoming more attrative options than anything Samsung is putting out these days. It seems that gimmicks aren’t selling as well as they once were
Rating: 1 Votes
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