Data shows iPhone sales went up 10 percent last year

Jan 13, 2021 18:13 GMT  ·  By

2020 has been the most awful year in a long time, and needless to say, the smartphone market itself has been severely hit by the global health issue.

Samsung certainly knows this very well, as the Galaxy S20, one of the company’s biggest new products last year, failed to impress, pretty much because it launched at a time when the entire world entered the lockdown and people could no longer get some hands-on time with the device before buying it.

And according to data from Digitimes Research, the smartphone market as a whole dropped no less than 8.8 percent last year as compared to 2019, and the global health issue is the main one to blame for the whole thing. Phone makers have thus shipped only 1.24 billion units last year.

But these all these problems, Apple still performed surprisingly well, with the iPhone sales actually up to no less than 10 percent for the year.

Demand for 5G iPhones on the rise

This isn’t necessarily surprising, with the iPhone said to be the world’s top smartphone last year.

However, the 5G push is what spearheaded sales in the smartphone industry, so it’s pretty clear Apple played this card just at the right time. All iPhone 12 models introduced last fall come with 5G support, and this is expected to help increase the company’s sales even further, despite the challenging market conditions that are yet to return to normal.

5G smartphones accounted for up to 300 million units in 2020, an increase from just 20 million units in 2019, so it’s pretty clear buyers across the world are hungry for faster speeds.

Samsung and Huawei have been hit by the global health issue quite hard, so Apple and Xiaomi are the only two big names that managed to increase their sales last year.