Apple overtakes Samsung as world’s number one smartphone manufacturer

Apple overtook Samsung as the world’s biggest smartphone seller in the fourth quarter of 2016 with iPhone shipments reaching 78.3 million units for 18 per cent of global sales.

The release of the iPhone 7 in September coincided with the beginning of Samsung’s woes with the Note7 and this had a definite effect on the Q4 2016 sales, according to independent research firm Strategic Analytics.

For Apple that was a five percent year-on-year increase.

Samsung’s Q4 sales were only slightly behind Apple at 77.5 million units and 17.7 per cent of the worldwide market.

Yet Samsung still sold more smartphones than Apple in 2016 overall – 309.4 million handsets compared to 215.4 million iPhones.

Samsung captured 20.8 per cent of smartphones sales in 2016 – its lowest since 2011 with Apple in second place for the year at 14.5 per cent.

The companies that rounded out the top four were Huawei (10.2 per cent) and Oppo with 6.7 per cent.

The sales figures come a day after Apple announced its latest financial results with revenue of $78.4 billion (a company record) and a net quarterly profit of $17.9 billion.

Even though iPhone sales are flying high (they made up 69 per cent of Apple’s revenue in 2016), the iPad sales declined from 16.1 million to 13.1 million and make up seven per cent Apple’s revenue.