Apple will beat Samsung for the Q4 smartphone market crown, but not by a lot

By Scott Marlette Last updated Dec 3, 2021

The sky is blue, water is wet, and Samsung always rules the global smartphone sales chart… up until a year’s final quarter. That’s when Apple works its holiday magic, releasing new premium iPhones that inevitably end up under tens of millions of Christmas trees around the world, trumping the initial popularity of the hottest Galaxy handsets.

The year that Samsung dropped the traditional Galaxy Note upgrade couldn’t have been an exception to the rule, especially given the widely reported success of the iPhone 13 family, which also made its commercial debut on time, unlike the iPhone 12 series back in the fall of 2020.

But if TrendForce’s newest prediction proves accurate, Apple’s top dogs and major investors might not be as delighted as they undoubtedly hoped by the Q4 2021 performance of the iPhone roster as a whole.

While the company is expected to once again move up from second place during Q3 to first in the mobile industry for the October – December timeframe, its lead over Samsung could actually decline compared to Q4 2020. Back then, Apple held a 6 percentage point advantage over its Korea-based arch-rival, according to Canalys, with TrendForce expecting the gap to narrow to less than 4 percent now.

Apple will be followed by Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi, and Vivo in the Q4 2021 smartphone market chart

We’re talking market shares of 23.2 and 19.4 percent respectively, naturally representing a huge gain for Apple and a small loss for Samsung from Q3 2021. More interestingly, however, Samsung’s figure would be significantly higher than the 17 percent slice of the global pie gobbled up during the last three months of 2020, while Apple is looking at a microscopic year-on-year progress from 23 percent.

Granted, these are not final numbers, which makes sense given that Q4 itself is not finalized yet, and as a general rule, it’s not really fair to compare reports from different market research firms.

It’s also not entirely clear if TrendForce is estimating smartphone shipments or production numbers here, but either way, it sure looks like Samsung’s foldable gamble this fall paid off.

Meanwhile, there’s not a lot of movement expected in third, fourth, and fifth place, with Oppo, Xiaomi, and Vivo respectively projected to retain their positions from Q3 and lose anywhere between 0.7 and 1.8 percent market share as a consequence of the iPhone 13’s worldwide popularity.

Looking ahead, Apple’s third-gen iPhone SE is tipped to ship more than 25 million units during Q1 2022 alone, which obviously means the budget-friendly 5G device will see daylight fairly early in the quarter. It remains to be seen if Samsung’s global industry domination can be threatened between January and March too, although that’s definitely unlikely with the Galaxy S22 series expected to go on sale by the end of the next quarter.

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