iPhone XR was the most popular phone of 2019, Samsung leads the 5G market

The Apple iPhone XR was the most popular phone of 2019, shipping more units than both its predecessor and its successor by a large margin, shows data by Omdia. Apple shipped 46.3 million XR phones last year and 23.1 million in 2018.

The iPhone 11, the new Apple mid-ranger, managed 37.3 million shipments in 2019. That was only good enough for second place, but it’s still millions more units than the iPhone 8, 8 Plus and X managed in 2018. Even with such good numbers, Apple’s total shipments fell for a second consecutive year (down 4.6% in 2019 and 5.1% in 2018).

Omdia attributes this to the increased prices of Apple products, pointing out that 2019’s iPhone 11 is $50 more expensive than 2016’s iPhone 7 (looking at the base prices). The maximum price for the fully-loaded flagship has gone up quite dramatically – from $970 for an iPhone 7 Plus to $1,450 for an 11 Pro Max, an increase of $480 in just three years.

Samsung claimed the third spot with the entry-level Galaxy A10, which moved 30.3 million units. The Galaxy A50 and A20 round off the Top 5. Samsung’s 2019 flagship smartphones did not make it into the Top 10 while Galaxy S9 and S9+ were 7th and 8th in 2018, respectively.

Xiaomi joined the Top 10 club last year thanks to the Redmi Note 7, the only phone outside Samsung and Apple to make it in 2019 (in 2018, the Huawei P20 Lite had that same honor). The Redmi Note series has been growing in popularity, going from 10 million shipments in 2017 and 2018 to 16.4 million in 2019, as Omdia points out.

The budding 5G market saw 14.7 million units shipped last year, just over 1% of all smartphone shipments. Samsung’s Galaxy Note10+ 5G accounted for 2.6 million of those, followed closely by the Huawei Mate 30 Pro 5G with 2.5 million. Samsung is in the lead in the 5G race with 49% of 5G phones shipped last year bearing the Galaxy logo, followed by Huawei with 27%, vivo and Oppo with 12% and 5%, respectively.

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