Samsung hikes its US market share in Q1 while Pixel's slice of American pie gets smaller

The iPhone continued to dominate the U.S. smartphone market during the first quarter although its share of Q1 phone shipments in the States was static at 52% compared with Q1 of 2023. Apple's lead over second place Samsung shrunk a little from the 25 percentage points advantage it had after Q1 2023 to 21 percentage points following the opening quarter of 2024. That's because Samsung saw its share of the U.S. smartphone market rise from 27% of shipments during the first three months of 2023 to the 31% it collected during Q1 of 2024.According to Counterpoint Research, this was the best U.S. first-quarter market share for Samsung since Q1 2020. There was strong demand for Galaxy S24 handsets from those owning older Galaxy S models and the earlier January 17th release date (compared to February 1st for the Galaxy S23 line) was cited by the research firm as playing a part in Samsung's successful quarter.

Everyone who took Smartphone 101 in school this past year could have told you that Apple and Samsung are numbers one and two in the States, respectively. But can you tell me which manufacturer is number three? Before we reveal the name of this company, we should point out that there is a huge drop off from Samsung's second place 31% share of the U.S. smartphone shipments to the 9% owned by the third-place firm. The third-place firm is Motorola and the company's share of smartphone shipments in the U.S. was up 1 percentage compared with the 8% it collected in Q1 2023.

Samsung closed the gap with Apple during Q1 2024

After Apple, Samsung, and Motorola, Google is next and while the chart released by Counterpoint Research doesn't mention Google's percentage of U.S. smartphone shipments for Q1 2024, Counterpoint does say that the percentage did decline from the 2% Pixel handsets had during the same quarter in 2023. Counterpoint senior research analyst Maurice Klaehne said, "Google declined in market share in Q1. It faced stiff competition from Samsung’s S24 launch. We also saw reduced volumes towards the end of the quarter as Google was gearing up for the launch of the 8a just a few days ago."

TCL also showed a decline in U.S. smartphone shipments during Q1 2024 on a year-over-year basis. The company was responsible for 2% of U.S. smartphone shipments during Q1 2023 but Counterpoint did not reveal the lower share of shipments TCL contributed to U.S. phone shipments during the first quarter of 2023.

Counterpoint says that U.S. shipments of Android phones in Q1 declined year-over-year and cited consolidation in the low end of the market as carriers switched from LTE phones to 5G models. With the costs of 5G components still high, Android phone manufacturers producing low-end phones had to deal with low profit margins.

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