(Credit: Emily Forlini)
Apple Intelligence failed to supercharge iPhone sales, which dipped 4.1% globally in Q4 2024.
Apple and Samsung were still the top two global smartphone makers for Q4 and 2024 overall, but both saw declines and lost market share to Chinese smartphone brands Xiaomi and Vivo, according to data from IDC.
Apple's Q4 shipments landed at 76.9 million for 23.2% market share, down from 80.2 million and 24.7% in Q4 2023, IDC says. Samsung saw a 2.7% drop after shipping 51.7 million phones in the quarter (its next flagship, the Galaxy S25, is expected on Jan. 22).
(Credit: Counterpoint Research)Counterpoint Research, which looked at smartphone sales for the entire year, found that Samsung and Apple were "largely flat YoY in 2024." Apple's overall business was down 2% for the year, while Samsung eked out a modest 1% growth.
Apple Intelligence was not available on the iPhone 16 lineup at launch, and when the first AI features arrived with iOS updates in October and December, they were relatively minor.
As a result, "Apple’s iPhone 16 series was met with a mixed response," Counterpoint says. "However, Apple continued to grow strongly in its non-core markets like Latin America, Africa, and Asia-Pacific-Others."
Apple says its current AI features are just the first steps in a long-term revolution for its devices. They include AI-powered Writing Tools, a ChatGPT integration, type-to-Siri capability, notification summaries, custom-designed "Genomij," and more. While most features are useful to some degree, others have been a miss, with notification summaries being particularly divisive.
Apple Intelligence is only available in English-speaking countries, including the US, Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK. This left a gap for consumers in other countries, particularly China, where companies there—Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Honor, Huawei, Lenovo, realme, Transsion, TCL, and ZTE—had a "remarkable" quarter, IDC says.
Though its phones are not sold in the US, Xiaomi has steadily grown in recent years, gaining a percentage point of market share every year since 2022. In contrast, Samsung's share has decreased from 21% to 19%, while Apple has struggled to get above 19%, Counterpoint says.
Apple plans to upgrade its AI features to support non-English languages this year, including Chinese, English (India), English (Singapore), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Vietnamese. That rollout begins with April's software update, though Apple did not confirm which languages will launch first.
Some of the more transformative Apple Intelligence features are further down the line, such as the revamped Siri, reportedly slated for a 2026 launch.