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Motorola and Samsung see their market share rocket in the US

By Joshua Swingle

Published: May 04, 2022, 2:14 PM

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Motorola and Samsung see their market share rocket in the US

Growth in the Chinese and Indian smartphone markets slowed considerably in the first three months of 2022 and a new report highlights similar issues currently being experienced in the United States.

The iPhone accounted for almost half of all US smartphone sales

While Counterpoint Research has chosen not to share a shipment number for the US smartphone market in Q1 2022, it’s reporting that sales were down 6% compared to the same quarter in 2021. This slowdown can be attributed to three main factors: a lack of stimulus money, decreased demand for premium smartphones following the holiday season, and continued supply constraints that affect both 4G LTE and 5G devices.

As well as this, it’s worth noting that most of the US smartphone market’s decline was concentrated around the iPhone, which lost a significant chunk of market share following stronger performances from its rivals.

Nevertheless, not all is bad for Apple in the United States. The iPhone continues to lead the overall market by a significant margin — it accounted for 47% of all shipments between January and March 2022. That’s down from 54% twelve months earlier, though revenue numbers were up thanks to a strong preference for the iPhone 13 series.

In fact, close to 80% of all sales belonged to the iPhone 13 family, the highest mix of new devices ever. It was enough to push Apple’s iPhone revenue to over $14 billion in the United States. Combined with international demand and sales of other products, this pushed Apple to a record quarter, as it announced last week.

Samsung reached its highest market share since 2014

The second most popular brand in the US continues to be Samsung. It managed to increase its market share and close the gap with Apple in the first three months of the year, with the two companies controlling a combined share of 75%.

Samsung alone accounted for an impressive 28% of all smartphone shipments in the market, representing its highest level of market share in almost a decade — since Q1 2014, to be exact. This success is attributed to the Galaxy S22 series and refreshed Galaxy A line. A recent report revealed that the Galaxy S22 Ultra was Samsung’s best-selling phone at carrier stores in February, with the Galaxy S22 and S22+ following closely behind.

Motorola, Google, and OnePlus doubled their market share

Despite Samsung and Apple’s dominant positions, the biggest winners so far this year have proven to be smaller brands like Motorola and Google, as well as OnePlus and TCL.

Motorola immediately positioned itself as the spiritual successor to LG following its exit from the smartphone market a year ago, and this strategy continued to pay off at the start of 2022. The Lenovo-owned company reached a market share of 12%, a new all-time high, thanks to its focus on affordable 5G smartphones.

The Moto G Stylus 5G, Moto G Pure, and Moto G Play 2021 were especially popular between January and March. And as noted in the report, Motorola has already started to refresh its product range with the newly announced Moto G 5G (2022) and Moto G Stylus 5G (2022), which should both satisfy demand in the coming months.

Google was another big winner last quarter, with shipments up an incredible 152% year-on-year following the launch of the Pixel 6 range in late 2021, enough to push its market share to 2%. The latest Pixel flagships accounted for more than 90% of sales.

Similarly, OnePlus saw demand for its smartphone rise 21% thanks to its continued success at T-Mobile with low-end smartphones. Interestingly, the flagship OnePlus 10 Pro has experienced a rather disappointing launch in the US.

Last on the list is TCL, which saw its market share triple from 1% to 3% by the end of March. It suffered heavily last year because of supply constraints but has since managed to recover with the help of its distribution deal with Metro by T-Mobile.