Apple Moves Up to Second Place in Global Smartphone Rankings Amidst Chip Shortage

A shortage of chips has prevented the global smartphone market from maintaining its position, and this has resulted in a 6% drop in smartphone sales all around the world. With the chip shortage likely not going to be resolved before the middle of 2022, chip manufacturers have been forced to increase prices so that they can reduce demand and allow supply to catch up with it. This has also resulted in smartphone manufacturers increasing their own prices in order to maintain profit margins while using the more expensive chips.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Samsung has continued to be the world’s top smartphone manufacturer in terms of sales, as per Canalys. It has maintained its market share of 23%, but one company that has actually benefited from the chip shortage is Apple. The tech giant has managed to regain its second place position in terms of smartphones, increasing its market share from 12% of 15% which has supplanted Xiaomi’s 14% share of the global smartphone market.

One reason for why Apple might be excelling right now is its high prices because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up eating the extra cost of expensive chips which is something that other smartphone manufacturers with their thinner profit margins are not able to do. Still, the chip shortage has still not managed to supplant Samsung’s top spot, and Apple’s lead of only 1 percentage point over Xiaomi is something that can be changed without warning.

Until the chip shortage ends, smartphone companies are definitely going to struggle to keep up with demand which is a really terrible thing to hear with the holiday season incoming since most people would want to buy new phones at around this time.



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