Apple can’t stop the US smartphone market from shrinking, but maybe the Galaxy S24 will،
With global smartphone shipments expected to increase in 2024 after several years of decline, one of the world's largest markets continued its struggles in January. According to latest preliminary data gathered by Counterpoint Researchthe United States saw 10% fewer sales in the first month of the new year compared to the same period in 2023.
That's obviously not great, but maybe it's not terrible either, with some sort of “bounce” “probably” driven by the Galaxy S24 family in February. Sure, Samsung's new ultra-high-end phones became available in late January, but that obviously wasn't enough to move the nation in an overall positive direction.
The biggest problem in the US smartphone market, however, was the “low-end segment”, which performed below expectations and probably path below its early 2023 results. Although no manufacturer is named (and shamed) for the general underperformance of this category, Motorola, TCL and, yes, Samsung are the first brands that come to mind when There's talk of low-cost mobile devices in the United States, and something tells us that all three companies can and probably have done better in previous months.
The premium and “ultra-premium” segments, meanwhile, have apparently seen “better” results, but probably not by much, as overall upgrade rates continue to be described as “lukewarm.”
To the surprise of no one with the slightest knowledge of the US market, Apple is still the country's leading smartphone supplier… by far, a supremacy consolidated by the continued popularity of the iPhone 15 range in the postpaid channel and “significant” interests prepaid on “obsolete” members of the iPhone 11 and 12 families.
Despite all this and despite “outperforming most brands”, the Cupertino-based tech giant also saw its own phone sales figures for January fall by “low single digits” per compared to the first 31 days of 2023. Apple nevertheless benefits from relative overall stability in a market “experiencing double-digit declines”, which obviously places the company in a good (at first) position to maintain the first place in the last year in the global mobile industry. But we are probably ahead after only a month and a (preliminary) report covering a single country.
