Samsung's Lead Over Apple In The Global Smartphone Market Is Down To Just 1%

The latest numbers are in, and Samsung’s lead in the global smartphone market keeps shrinking, with just a few million smartphones and 1% separating Apple from the top spot.

Over the past few years Apple has been nipping at Samsung’s heels in terms of being the world’s largest smartphone maker, but the company has yet to fully hold the title.

According to the latest data from Canalys, Q1 2025 saw Samsung shipping just a few more phones than Apple. Samsung is estimated to have shipped 60.5 million devices, just 5.5 million more than Apple’s 55 million. That’s a lead of 1% in the overall smartphone market, a narrow margin. And that’s on the back of “strong sales” of Samsung’s new Galaxy S25 release, as the company touted in its latest earnings report. Samsung only grew by 1% year-over-year, too, while Apple saw 13% annual growth.

The report goes on to detail “increasingly complex” regional breakdowns of the smartphone market, with some regions such as the United States and Africa growing, but others such as Europe and India shrinking. The US saw the most annual growth, jumping by 12%, “primarily driven by Apple,” the report says.