With the arrival of 2022, the sales performance of major mobile phone manufacturers in the global smartphone market in 2021 has also been settled. According to foreign media MacRumors, Canalys released the latest report, in the fourth quarter of 2021, Apple's iPhone accounted for about one-fifth of all global smartphone shipments, making Apple the largest smartphone supplier again. Apple did not release specific iPhone sales figures. Separately, a recent counterpoint Research report said the iPhone 13 is currently the number one best-selling smartphone in China.
Canalys estimates that in the fourth quarter of 2021, the iPhone accounted for 22% of global smartphone shipments. The size of Apple's shipments was driven by strong demand for the iPhone 13 series, which launched last September. Canalys analyst Sanyam Chaurasia said: "Driven by the outstanding performance of the iPhone 13 series, Apple is back at the top of the smartphone market after three quarters. Apple saw unprecedented iPhone purchasing power performance Chinese mainland, with aggressive pricing of its flagship devices keeping its value proposition strong. Apple's supply chain began to recover, but in the fourth quarter, it was still forced to cut production due to shortages of key components, unable to produce enough iPhones to meet demand. In priority markets, it maintains sufficient lead times, but in some markets, its customers have to wait to get the latest iPhones. ”
Apple took back the number one spot from Samsung, which dominated top smartphone vendors last quarter. Shipments of Samsung phones are slightly inferior to Apple's, with a market share of 20%. Xiaomi retained its third-place position with a 12% share of shipments. OPPO's shipment share was 9%, ranking fourth; vivo's shipment share was 8%, ranking fifth.
For the whole year of 2021, according to the 2021 global smartphone shipment ranking released by market research agency DIGitimes Research. According to statistics, in 2021, the global smartphone shipments will be about 1.32 billion units, an annual growth rate of only 6.1%, and the first mobile phone shipment is still the familiar Samsung mobile phone, which is already the 12th consecutive year that Samsung has the world's first mobile phone shipments. The second place is the well-known domestic mobile phone Xiaomi, and the third is the Apple mobile phone. Four to six are OPPO, Vivo and Realme.
Affected by supply chain issues, global overall smartphone shipments increased by only 1%, but supply chain disruptions mainly affected low-end suppliers, rather than giants such as Apple. Canalys also noted that it could take several years for component manufacturers to fully ramp up capacity to meet demand. Industry bottlenecks are not expected to ease until the second half of 2022.