- 2025’s modest smartphone growth was powered by premium devices, with Apple and Samsung capturing most of the upside despite rising costs and supply constraints.
- Market concentration accelerated, as Chinese OEMs largely stagnated or declined while the top two expanded their combined share.
- The outlook for 2026 is weaker, with memory shortages and higher costs expected to push shipments down while prices continue to rise.
By most standards, 2025 should have been a write-off for the global smartphone industry. The year was defined by overlapping pressures: tariff volatility across key markets, ongoing supply chain disruptions, and an escalating memory (RAM) shortage that squeezed manufacturers from all sides. For many vendors, higher component costs and tighter supply left little room to manoeuvre, especially in the budget and midrange segments.
Yet, against that backdrop, the market refused to fall apart. Global smartphone shipments grew 2.3% year-over-year in Q4 2025, with 336.3 million units shipped, according to IDC. For the full year, shipments reached 1.26 billion units, marking 1.9% growth compared to 2024. And in the midst of all this, what’s more surprising is where that growth came from.
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Premium smartphones drove market growth in Q4 2025
In a year marked by rising costs, you might expect consumers to pull back or trade down. Instead, the opposite happened. Growth in late 2025 was driven largely by premium devices, with Apple and Samsung emerging as the market’s clear anchors.
Apple shipped 81.3 million iPhones in Q4, capturing 24.2% of global market share, while Samsung followed with 61.2 million units and 18.2% share. Combined, the two companies accounted for nearly 43% of all smartphones shipped in the quarter, and 39% of the market for the full year, up from 37% in 2024.
Even more telling is the growth rate. For 2025 as a whole, Apple shipments rose 6.3% YoY to 247.8 million units, and Samsung grew 7.9% YoY to 241.2 million units. In other words, the strongest growth came not from volume-focused brands, but from the two most premium-heavy OEMs in the market.
Apple and Samsung lead global smartphone growth in 2025
Several factors worked in their favour.
First, premiumisation accelerated. With price hikes expected due to tariffs and component shortages, many consumers chose to buy sooner, and when they did, they opted for higher-end models they planned to keep longer. Apple benefited directly from this trend, as the iPhone 17 series helped the company achieve its best Q4 since 2021 and its highest-ever quarterly revenue.
Samsung, meanwhile, leaned on two fronts. On the high end, its Galaxy Z Fold 7 delivered strong foldable sales, helping Samsung post its strongest Q4 growth since 2013. At the same time, the company pushed AI-enabled Galaxy A-series devices, giving it scale in the upper midrange without fully competing on price alone.
Second, scale mattered. As supply tightened, larger OEMs were better positioned to secure memory supply and absorb rising costs. That advantage became increasingly visible as smaller players struggled to grow meaningfully.
The rest of the market largely stood still
Outside the top two, performance across the rest of the market was far more muted. Xiaomi held on to its third-place position but recorded an 11.4% year-over-year decline in Q4, underscoring the difficulty of shifting its portfolio toward higher price points while facing intensifying competition in China. Vivo’s performance was largely flat, with whatever growth it managed coming mainly from India, which has become one of its most critical markets.
OPPO, on the other hand, delivered a stronger fourth quarter on the back of new product launches and improved momentum in China, although its full-year shipments still slipped slightly. Taken together, brands outside the top tier saw their combined market share fall to 30.4% in Q4, down from 31.9% a year earlier, highlighting how the market continued to grow more concentrated even as overall shipments increased.
Will the pressure go away in 2026?
Despite ending 2025 on a positive note, analysts aren’t optimistic about what comes next. The same forces that shaped last year are expected to intensify in 2026, with the memory shortage now viewed as a genuine threat to market stability rather than a temporary disruption.
As IDC’s Ryan Reith puts it: “While 2025 was a positive year for smartphones, the industry is now facing a distinctly different outlook. The memory shortage, which is widely considered an unprecedented supply chain disruption, will cause the market to decline in 2026, and the duration of the shortage will ultimately determine the extent of the market contraction.”
Even if shipments fall, average selling prices are expected to rise, as higher component costs are passed on to consumers. Once again, this dynamic favours large OEMs with pricing power and global scale.
What this moment really shows
The key takeaway from 2025 isn’t just that the smartphone market grew; it’s how it grew. In a year filled with uncertainty, growth came from consumers doubling down on premium devices and from manufacturers with the size and brand strength to weather supply shocks.
If 2026 does turn out to be a down year, the gap between the market’s biggest players and everyone else may widen even further. 2025 may ultimately be remembered not as a recovery year, but as the point where the smartphone industry’s centre of gravity shifted decisively toward scale, premium pricing, and consolidation.
Louis Eriakha
