Abstract:
Counterpoint Research, a well-known research organization, announced the global mobile phone best-selling list for the second quarter of 2026.
Among the top ten best-selling models, the top three are all Apple phones, namely iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro Max and iPhone 17 Pro.
Counterpoint Research pointed out that iPhone 17 was the world’s best-selling smartphone in the second quarter of 2026, and its shipments accounted for 6% of total global smartphone shipments.
It is worth noting that Apple and Samsung each occupy five seats in the top ten list, accounting for 26% of global smartphone shipments, an increase of 2 percentage points from the same period last year. However, the overall market experienced an 11% decline.
When talking about Apple's market performance, senior analyst Karn Chauhan said that despite the overall decline in the market, Apple's shipments still achieved a year-on-year growth of 5%.
Driven by the iPhone 17 series, iPhone sales increased in India, Japan, and the Middle East and Africa in the second quarter of 2026, and sales in South Korea almost doubled. The iPhone 17’s outstanding market performance is mainly due to Apple’s precise strategy of “increasing quantity without increasing price”.
On the standard version, Apple has decentralized the 120Hz ProMotion adaptive high-refresh screen for the first time, and doubled the starting storage space from 128GB to 256GB, but the starting price remains at 5,999 yuan.
After making up for the core shortcomings such as high refresh rate and large storage, the experience gap between the iPhone 17 standard version and the Pro series has been greatly narrowed, successfully attracting a large number of "nail households" users who hold older iPhones to switch.
In the Android camp, Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra became the best-selling Android phone in the second quarter of 2026. Analyst Harshit Rastogi said that compared to the Galaxy S25 series, the Galaxy S26 series will be launched later.
The Galaxy S26 Ultra outperforms its predecessors, accounting for more than half of the series’ sales. The industry’s first privacy screen and enhanced AI capabilities make it stand out among similar models.
Samsung’s entry-level and mid-range Galaxy A series continue to remain popular due to their affordable prices, wide channel coverage and excellent price/performance ratio. It is worth noting that
all Galaxy A series devices in the top ten offer software update support for six years or more to accommodate consumers' ever-lengthening replacement cycles.
Comments