We know that both Apple and Samsung have a pretty intense rivalry. They both like to take jabs at each other during their keynotes. There is a new graph out from Time which shows how their market share changes at the launch of the new iPhone and new Galaxy S smartphone. It’s quite interesting actually. And each year, the drops and jumps get larger and larger. In fact if you look at the iPhone 4 and the Galaxy S2, Samsung didn’t lose any market share at all, it kept going up. But looking at the Apple market share for the iPhone 4, it actually declined until the Galaxy S2 was announced and then it rose. Pretty crazy.
Looking at the graph, you’ll notice something. Apple and Samsung haven’t been this close since the iPhone 4s and Galaxy S3 launch. That was back in 2012. And ironically, that was back when Samsung really started their dominance, and made a design that Apple couldn’t sue them over. Since then, Samsung has had a sizable lead over Apple until this past year when the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were announced and became available. Then Apple’s market share skyrocketed, and they are almost dead even right now. Of course, it’ll likely change in a few months, especially after we see Q2 numbers come out. Seeing as the Galaxy S6 was made available in Q2, even though it was announced in Q1.
It’s good that these two are neck-and-neck. Why? Competition. Samsung is a prime example of not having competition. For years we had pretty much the same design from Samsung with only incremental changes (they weren’t the only ones though). And they had no competition forcing them to change. However the Galaxy S5 pretty much bombed, in Samsung’s terms. And they didn’t want to get set in their ways, so they did an all new design for the Galaxy S6 and now they having some pretty amazing sale numbers. Which is a great thing for Samsung. And a prime reason why we need competition. Competition drives innovation, which is a win/win for the customer.