Apple was the fastest-growing smartphone maker in 2025.
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You can’t often say this about massive companies with huge market share, but here’s an exception: Apple was the fastest-growing major smartphone manufacturer in the world last year with 20% global share and 10% year-over-year growth, according to new data just released by Counterpoint.
“Apple’s growth in 2025 was driven by its expanding presence and rising demand across emerging and mid‑size markets, supported by a stronger product mix,” says Counterpoint senior analyst Varun Mishra. “The iPhone 17 series gained significant traction in Q4 following its successful launch, while the iPhone 16 continued to perform exceptionally well in Japan, India and Southeast Asia. This dual momentum was further amplified by the COVID‑era upgrade cycle reaching its inflection point, as millions of users were due for replacement.”
In other words, Covid was still helping out tech stocks in 2025.
Top global smartphone makers are:
- Apple: 20% share
- Samsung: 19% share
- Xiaomi: 13% share
- Vivo: 8% share
- Oppo: 8% share
Dozens of other regional or smaller smartphone makers make up the rest of global smartphone supply with a combined 32% share. Within that group of smaller phone makers, Google did well, with 25% year-over-year growth in units shipped. So did Nothing, the innovative challenger brand of phones that Tom’s Guide called “the most unique flagship of 2025.”
Three of the top five global manufacturers are Chinese, unsurprisingly. A huge percentage of smartphones are manufactured in China, and Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo together picked up almost 30% of global phone shipments.
Samsung is still the second-largest phone manufacturer, with 19% share, but grew slower than Apple with just 5% year-over-year growth.
The outlook for the phone market isn’t amazing for 2026. Thanks to the global data center boom fueled by an unprecedented demand for AI, memory prices are skyrocketing, making phones more expensive and harder to build.
“The global smartphone market is set to soften in 2026 amid DRAM/NAND shortages and rising component costs, as chipmakers prioritize AI data centers over smartphones,” said Counterpoint research director Tarun Pathak. “Price hikes in smartphones have already begun to surface.”
Though that will be challenging for all smartphone makers, there’s probably a silver lining in the market clouds for industry leaders Apple and Samsung, whose massive scale and higher prices can demand greater support from memory makers.
