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Shimul Sood / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Apple grew iPhone shipments by 1.3% in Q1 2026 even as the overall US smartphone market dropped 5.7%, according to Counterpoint Research.
- Android brands took a much bigger hit, with US smartphone sales falling 14.4% year over year.
- Samsung’s delayed Galaxy S26 launch left a premium phone gap in January and February, and Apple quickly capitalized on it, the research suggests.
Apple is doing something Android brands would rather not talk about right now. iPhone shipments grew in the first quarter of 2026 after finishing 2025 as the world’s top smartphone brand in terms of units shipped. This is despite the fact that the US smartphone market shrank.
Counterpoint Research’s latest data for Q1 2026 shows that total US smartphone sales declined 5.7% year-over-year (YoY). Nevertheless, Apple still managed to grow its sales by 1.3%. If you’re an Android fan, the numbers are even worse: Android sales in the US fell 14.4% over the same period.
The first quarter is usually a tussle between Apple’s aging iPhone cycle and Samsung’s shiny new flagships. This year, the script was flipped. Samsung has postponed the launch of the Galaxy S26 series to mid-March. That one month delay created a premium vacuum, which Apple was more than happy to fill.
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With no new Galaxy flagship to steal the spotlight in January and February, consumers ready for an upgrade just walked into carrier stores and walked out with an iPhone 17.
The big US carriers’ numbers tell a dominant story: Apple took over. The tech giant’s share of smartphone sales at Verizon hit a massive 77% in Q1. To put that in perspective, that means that three out of every four phones sold at Big Red had a lightning bolt, er, USB-C port, and an Apple logo on them.
Counterpoint said Apple played the promotional game hard, beating Samsung on “promotional power” for devices priced above $600. While Android OEMs are battling rising component costs, Apple has managed to keep its pricing for entry-level models like the iPhone 17e stable, even doubling the base storage to 256GB.
It isn’t all doom and gloom for Android fans. Motorola and Samsung did see some growth, of course, in the prepaid and the national retail spaces (Walmart, Target) but the high-end postpaid space is an Apple fortress at the moment.
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