Samsung rises in US market as iPhone drops by double digits

In an interesting report released today, Canales He says that while the US smartphone market barely moved in total shipments during the second quarter of 2025, Samsung and India saw explosive growth, while Apple saw a rare double-digit decline. Here are the details.

Samsung reduces Apple’s market share by almost half

According to CanalesWhile the overall US smartphone market grew just 1% in the second quarter of 2025, to 27.1 million units, compared to 26.7 million a year earlier, Samsung recorded the strongest performance of any vendor. The Korean company shipped 8.3 million units, an increase of 38% year-on-year, with its market share rising from 23% to 31%.

Meanwhile, Apple saw shipments decline 11% to 13.3 million units, down from 14.9 million last year. However, it took first place with a 49% share of the US market, ahead of Samsung’s 31% share.

In practical terms, this means that Samsung was able to close its market share gap from 33% a year ago to 18% in the last quarter, which Runar Bjorhovde, senior analyst at Canalys, attributed to:

“Vendors continue to front-load devices and maintain high inventory levels to better handle the risks of tariffs that will take effect later in the year (…). Apple quickly built up its inventories at the end of the first quarter and sought to maintain that level in the second quarter. Samsung increased its inventory in the second quarter, boosting its shipment growth by 38% year-on-year, driven mostly by Galaxy A series devices. However, the market grew only 1% despite sellers loading inventory in Introduction, indicating tepid demand in an increasingly stressed economic environment and a widening gap between on-sale and on-sale Even if smartphones remain tariff-free, many other categories are affected, which could significantly impact consumer spending patterns and keep smartphone demand modest in the second half.

For reference, during the second quarter of last year, Canalys posted 1% YoY growth and 19% market share for Samsung (down 2% YoY), while Apple came in second with 6% YoY growth and 16% market share, 1% lower than Q2 2023.

“Made in India” is the new “Made in China”.

While it may be interesting to see which vendors perform better or worse in a year-over-year comparison, perhaps the more interesting story this quarter is where these phones may come from.

According to Canalys, India has surpassed China for the first time as a leading manufacturing hub for smartphones shipped to the US.

This is a clear result of escalating trade and tariff tensions, which has led to the share of US smartphone shipments manufactured in China falling sharply from 61% in the second quarter of 2024, to only 25% in this quarter. Meanwhile, India rose from 13% to 44% (a whopping 240% year-on-year growth), as vendors raced to diversify their supply chains away from China.

Here’s Sanyam Chaurasia, Principal Analyst at Canalys:

“India became the leading manufacturing hub for smartphones sold in the US for the first time in the second quarter of 2025, driven largely by Apple’s accelerated supply chain shift to India (…) Apple has increased its production capacity in India over the past several years as part of its ‘China Plus One’ strategy and has chosen to devote the majority of its export capacity in India to supplying the US market so far in 2025.”

The Canalys report also notes that Vietnam has seen 6% growth as a US smartphone manufacturing hub, now accounting for 30% of total shipments.

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