Apple Loses to Android as Smartphone Market Recovers

New research shows that the smartphone market will recover in 2024 after two years of sharp declines.

However, Apple’s The iPhone played only a small role in this recovery compared to rival Android phones, data released Tuesday (Nov. 26) at IDC shows.

Global smartphone shipments for the year are expected to rise 6.2% to 1.24 billion units, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. That’s a trend driven by “accumulated demand for device upgrades,” the research team said in a news release.

And while this year marked a robust recovery for the smartphone space, IDC expects growth to slow to single digits from next year and beyond, due to increasing smartphone penetration, longer update cycles and a fast-growing used phone market.

“While GenAI continues to be a hot topic and top priority for many vendors, it has yet to significantly impact demand and drive early upgrades,” said Nabila Popal, senior research director at IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.

“While we continue to believe that GenAI will revolutionize the user experience in the coming years, more investment is needed to raise consumer awareness and introduce a ‘must have’ feature that will rush consumers to the store and create the super cycle which everyone is waiting for.”

For now, Popal added, IDC expects smartphones using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to “take their place in premium flagship devices” and become 70% of the smartphone market by 2028.

According to the report, Android phones saw rapid growth of 7.6% this year in Asia (excluding Japan and China), Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, especially in lower-end devices. This growth was decisive for the overall increase of 6.2%. By comparison, Apple’s iOS phones are expected to grow by just 0.4% for the year.

“Despite record-breaking performance in growth markets like India, Apple faces challenges in large markets such as China, the US and Europe,” the report states. “Looking ahead to 2025, the tide will turn as iOS is expected to grow 3.1% year-on-year, outpacing Android’s projected growth of 1.7 % in the same period.”

PYMNTS investigated the race among smartphone manufacturers to lure consumers using artificial intelligence earlier this month.

“One good thing about AI-powered apps is their ability to create personalized experiences,” Dmytro Tymoshenko, CEO of Noiz, which creates AI-powered summaries of YouTube videos, told PYMNTS. “AI is able to analyze data at a very high speed, which allows it to recommend content based on user preferences quite quickly.”