The iPhone showed its first decline in sales numbers earlier in 2012, which is reiterated by the newest US mobile market data from Kantar Worldpanel. It finds Apple’s flagship smartphone family lagging behind Samsung’s latest, with 16 percent of American consumers purchasing a Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge and 14.6 percent buying an iPhone 6S or 6S Plus. Now, granted, it’s not a good fight, due to Samsung’s S7 and S7 Edge being the newer handsets by a split year, but it’s one which Apple has typically been winning anyway. Not so in 2016.
Taking a look at sales to the three months ending in May, Kantar also found Samsung had the largest share from the overall US market, with 37 percent to Apple’s 29 percent. Apple still commands a better loyalty rating, with 88 percent of current customers intending to purchase another iPhone, but Samsung is almost equal, with 86 percent of the users intending to remain loyal. The latter stat is in fact a monumental achievement for Samsung, which designed to be excellent at selling people new devices, but awful at supporting them and making customers feel valued.
This year’s Galaxy S7 generation builds upon the solid foundation of last year’s S6 and it is undoubtedly one of the best new flagship we’ve seen since Apple’s last update. Samsung’s consistent improvement in camera quality and user experience is evidently paying off, but it’s also worth noting how the Korean company was capable of to release its 2016 flagship. The S7 was on March 11th, whereas compatriot LG came a month later using its G5 handset, and Taiwan’s HTC was another month later while using HTC 10. Sony, which announced a brand new flagship-tier device inside the Xperia X Performance at a similar February event as Samsung’s Galaxy S7 unveiling, still hasn’t brought against each other in the marketplace. It’s a sort of a challenge to tackle either Apple or Samsung if the best new product isn’t even on store shelves.