The Apple iPhone 5 is the king of the hill when it comes to smartphone sales. The fourth quarter numbers from 2012 are in, and the iPhone 5 was the clear winner in sales, beating out the Samsung Galaxy S3.
Apple’s victory comes despite a new ad campaign by Samsung that directly pitted the S3 against the iPhone 5 at the end of last year. Dazeinfo reports that the news for Apple is actually better than simply a win for the iPhone 5.
A financial report by Strategy Analytics shows that the Samsung Galaxy S3 actually finished third in sales behind both the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 4s.
Valuewalk reported that the iPhone 5 sold 27.4 million handsets in the fourth quarter of 2012, while the iPhone 4S sold 17.4 million. The numbers also show that Apple’s unit sales are going up.
The iPhone 5 unit sales increased from 6 million in the third quarter of 2012 (the quarter it was introduced) to 27.4 million units in the fourth quarter.
The Apple iPhone 4S didn’t see growth quite like that, but unit sales went from 16.2 million in Q3 to 17.4 in Q4. Conversely, Samsung actually saw its unit sales slip from the third to the fourth quarter of 2012.
The Samsung Galaxy S3 slipped from 18 million units sold in the third quarter to 15.4 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012. These sales numbers drastically affected the marketshares for both Apple and Samsung.
At the end of the third quarter, Samsung held 10.4 percent of the market while the iPhone 4S had 9.4 percent and the iPhone 5 had a paltry 3.5 percent (for a combined 12.9 percent of the market for Apple).
At the end of the fourth quarter, Samsung’s marketshare had fallen to 7.1 percent. Both the iPhone 4s (8 percent) and the iPhone 5 (12.6 percent) beat that number individually and combined to give Apple more than 20 percent of the market.
Samsung does have a return volley in the works with the impending release of the Galaxy S4 . Will the Apple iPhone 5 be able to stay on top once Samsung’s new phone is released?