Apple recorded a phenomenal fourth quarter in 2020, selling more smartphones than any single vendor ever has in a single quarter, according to IDC.
Separately, the company reported more than $111 billion in record sales of all its products, an improvement of 21% year-over-year. Total iPhone revenues were $65.6 billion. Earnings per share were up 35%, according to Apple’s Wednesday earnings report.
IDC said Apple shipped 90.1 million iPhones in the holiday quarter, gaining it 23% market share and improving by 22% over the fourth quarter of 2019. Samsung finished second with nearly 74 million smartphones and 19% market share, IDC said. Xiaomi finished third with 43 million and 11% share.
All smartphone vendors shipped nearly 386 million smartphones in the fourth quarter, up 4.3% over a year earlier. The full year of 2020 was down 5.9%, however.
“Progress toward market recovery has been impressive and IDC believe the momentum heading into 2021will remain strong,” IDC said in a statement.
IDC analyst Nabila Popal said pent-up demand because of the pandemic, aggressive promotions, a greater supply of 5G phones and the popularity of low and mid-priced phones helped fuel the fourth quarter smartphone recovery.
For Apple, it was the success of the iPhone 12 series, with 5G capabilities and a range of prices.
“Lockdowns have people spending less on areas like leisure, travel and dining out and smartphones are benefiting,” Popal said. “The fast recovery resilience of the smartphone supply chain also has to be given some credit.”
“The majority of the world is either in some form of lockdown or is still waiting to return to normal day-to-day life, yet smartphone sales are rebounding as though nothing ever happened,” added Ryan Reith, program vice president of IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers. “This illustrates the importance of smartphones in everyone’s life and provide a strong foundation for market demand.”
Apple finished the entire year of 2020 with nearly 8% growth in iPhone shipments over 2019 with shipments of 206 million units, IDC said. That meant it finished second for the entire year to Samsung, which reached 266 million smartphone shipments, gaining 20% market share for the entire year but still declining nearly 10% from 2019.
Some analysts believe Apple’s dominance in the fourth quarter bolster the concept of a super cycle for investors where must-have updates combine with a natural customer upgrade cycle to drive sales growth. The iPhone 12 models fit this concept because added 5G and included other rich features like a powerful A14 Bionic processor in all four models and a lidar scanner in two high-end iPhone 12 Pro models.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said in the Wednesday earnings calls that Apple saw the largest number of existing iPhone customers upgrade to the iPhone 12 family ever seen in a quarter. Apple also saw strong sales in China where 5G networks are well established, moreso than in other regions.
Apple shares traded down 2% after its earnings call, reaching 139 before the Thursday market opening due to larger market instability partly due to a GameStop surge, according to analysts.
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