iPhone X Was Responsible for the Drop in Apple’s U.S. Smartphone Market Share – Here Is How

Dec 5, 2017

After a few, negligible cosmetic changes to its iPhone lineup, Apple finally announced its iPhone X in September and officially released the smartphone on November 3. Unfortunately, buyers were anticipating a larger than usual price tag so they decided to hold off on their purchases until the iPhone X was available to buy.

Unfortunately, this lack of consumer interest towards other devices resulted in Apple dropping a few percentage points in the U.S. for its market share but now that the iPhone X is officially here, this is not necessarily a bad thing.

Customers Holding Off on Purchases to Get the iPhone X Resulted in a 7.6 Percent Drop in Mobile Sales in October

According to Kantar customers who ultimately decided to get the iPhone X resulted in Apple losing a 7.6 percent share in mobile sales in October if you compared this figure to the same month last year. This was the period when Android handset manufacturers enjoyed a large amount of traction, with an 8.2 percent increase in mobile sales, while Windows Mobile sales continued to drop.

The dataset claims that in those three months, Android held 66.2 percent of the U.S.-sold smartphones, with Apple holding 32.9 percent. However, giants like Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo must be feeling the pressure as Apple has obtained a small, but noticeable 0.5 percent market share jump in China to 17.4 percent.

Kantar believes that this drop in sales of the iPhone was inevitable as customers would eventually be upgrading to the iPhone X.

“It was somewhat inevitable that Apple would see volume share fall once we had a full comparative month of sales taking into account the non-flagship iPhone 8 vs. the flagship iPhone 7 from 2016. Considering the complete overhaul that the iPhone X offers, consumers may be postponing their purchase decisions until they can test the iPhone X and decide whether the higher price, compared to the iPhone 8, is worth the premium to them.”

Do you think Apple will gain a massive jump in the iOS market share for the U.S.? Tell us down in the comments.