Apple's iPhone XR trumps two surprising Samsung challengers for first place in global H1 sales
While global rankings of smartphone vendors are something many market research firms put together every three months, it seems to be a little harder to determine the exact shipment numbers of individual models and compile a chart of the most popular devices in the world based on that. One of the few such reports released of late comes from IHS Markit (via Cnet), unsurprisingly ranking the iPhone XR at the top of the year's H1 list, ahead of two unexpected Samsung challengers.
Apple's most affordable 2018 iPhone variant racked up an estimated 13.6 million unit sales during the first quarter of 2019 and an additional 13.3 million between April and June for a first-half total of 26.9 million units. That's not particularly shocking to hear, as the 6.1-inch LCD screen-sporting handset previously topped the US best-selling lists of January and Q2 2019.
But because this new report measures worldwide sales figures, the iPhone XR is followed in second place by an Android device you can't actually buy stateside and in third place by one that reached US shores towards the end of the year's first six months. We're talking about the low to mid-end Galaxy A10 and the upper mid-range Galaxy A50, the former of which sold an impressive 13.4 million copies in the January - June 2019 timeframe, while the latter gathered a solid 12 million sales of its own. And now you know the real reason why Samsung's numbers recently bounced back without generating profit growth.
Speaking of popular handsets that don't exactly boast hefty profit margins, the iPhone 8 was ranked fourth on the same H1 2019 best-selling list, with 10.3 million units, followed by Xiaomi's Redmi 6A and Redmi Note 7, Samsung's modest Galaxy J2 Core, the Oppo A5, Apple's iPhone XS Max, and the Galaxy A30. No sign of either Samsung's latest or previous flagships, and interestingly, no top ten placement from Huawei either, even though many analysts claimed the company's results were not severely impacted by political tensions.
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