In 2014, Apple and Samsung have been duking it out to rule the U.S. smartphone marketplace. Samsung used to be promoting gadgets with broad displays, and iPhone fanatics have been challenging a reaction.
It took Apple once in a while, however the corporate after all exempted the iPhone 6, breaking with earlier iterations and giving shoppers a large-screen possibility. The iPhone received.
However greater than a decade nearest, fresh smartphone gross sales and cargo figures sign that the Apple-Samsung battle has returned. And as soon as once more, it’s all in regards to the conceal.
In the second one quarter, shipments from Samsung surged within the U.S., with its marketplace percentage emerging from 23% to 31% from the prior length, consistent with knowledge from Canalys. Apple’s marketplace percentage right through the quarter declined to 49% from 56%.
Apple remainder on lead of the U.S. smartphone marketplace, taking the vast majority of fresh smartphone gross sales within the U.S. It’s regularly in moment playground all over the world, however the fresh slips issues to turbulence for Apple for the primary past in smartly over a decade.
That’s one reason why traders have despatched Apple stocks ill 7.5% this time, underperforming all the U.S. megacap tech corporations alternative than Tesla. Samsung’s retain, in the meantime, is up about 35% in 2025.
In July, Samsung presented a couple of leading edge fresh telephones that property foldable displays. One fashion, the Z Wrinkle 7, can successfully become a pill, moment the Z Turn resembles an old-school turn telephone with trendy smartphone options. They have been added to Samsung’s catalog of telephones exempted this spring beneath its Galaxy logo, together with a thin-and-light telephone referred to as the Galaxy S25 Edge.
The gadgets also are getting a bundle of traction on social media, specifically round sturdiness assessments.
One consumer posted a livestream that confirmed him bending the Z Wrinkle 7 over 200,000 instances in a row. The video has been clipped and shared extensively on social media, with one model of the clip gathering greater than 15 million perspectives on YouTube.
Within the while moment, Samsung’s top rate gadgets, together with the Z Wrinkle 7, have been discussed over 50,000 instances on social media, and 83% of the ones mentions have been sure or impartial, consistent with knowledge from Sprout Social, a social media analytics corporate.
The marketplace percentage numbers aren’t simply the results of consumer personal tastes. A lot of the shift in cargo figures within the June quarter, analysts stated, will also be attributed to price lists, that are inflicting “disruption” within the trade as smartphone makers virtue other methods to attenuate the have an effect on on their industry.
However Samsung’s good points additionally mirror the corporate’s skill to trade in a wider length of goods at other costs in comparison to Apple. That comes with low-end telephones, which accounted for far of Samsung’s second-quarter U.S. growth, in addition to high-end gadgets that value greater than anyone iPhone.
Samsung’s Galaxy and Z telephone lineup “stretches from $650 up to $2,400. That is a massive span of devices,” stated Canalys analyst Runar Bjorhovde.“There is an idea that you can target people at every single price point, and you can meet them at every spot.”
The iPhone has nice-looking a lot appeared the similar since 2017 — an oblong piece of glass with a touchscreen at the entrance, and a couple of cameras at the again. Nowadays, the corporate trade in a layout of 4 slates starting from $829 to $1,599. Samsung and others are inauguration to travel past the so-called sweet bar surrounding and experimenting with fresh method components.
Apple is predicted to start out doing the similar — starting with a possible origination subsequent moment of a slimmer iPhone that can compete with Samsung’s Galaxy Edge.
“Apple is clearly betting that its 5.5mm Air model is going to lift its fortunes as testing suggests a strong desire for the new form factor,” wrote Loop Capital managing director John Donovan in Would possibly.
JPMorgan Chase analyst Samik Chatterjee wrote in a file closing moment that Apple might drop a folding telephone subsequent time to compete with Samsung’s Z Wrinkle.
“Investor focus has already turned to the 2026 fall launches with Apple expected to launch its first foldable iPhone as part of the iPhone 18 lineup in September 2026,” Chatterjee wrote.
Attempting fresh method components trade in Apple the chance to promote gadgets at upper costs, consistent with Bjorhovde.
Apple’s costliest telephone, the iPhone 16 Pro Max, lately begins at $1,199 for 256GB of store and will travel as much as $1,599 for a model with 1TB of store. The Samsung Galaxy Z Wrinkle 7, which used to be introduced closing year, begins at $1,999 for the 256GB model and tops out at $2,419 for the 1TB model.
Chatterjee stated he thinks Apple’s model of a folding telephone may get started at $1,999. Apple declined to remark.
An individual holds a Samsung Galaxy Z Wrinkle 7 telephone right through an tournament in Untouched York, U.S., July 8, 2025.
But Samsung says this time is different, and that folding phones are finally ready to go mainstream, especially with respect to durability.
“There really are no longer trade-offs towards owning a foldable device,” said Drew Blackard, vice president of mobile product management at Samsung Electronics America.
The South Korean company doesn’t provide sales numbers, but Blackard said the Galaxy Z Fold 7, the latest version, had 25% more preorders than any previous Samsung folding phone and that sales are outpacing the device’s predecessor by nearly 50%.
“Samsung with the foldable is able to actually optimize for innovation,” stated Bjorhovde. “Try to be ahead, show that something is different, and there’s a certain halo effect from that.”
In keeping with Counterpoint Analysis, a company that estimates smartphone gross sales to consumers, Samsung’s sell-through larger 16% right through the June quarter, due to call for for high-end gadgets, together with a “slight boost” from the thin S25 Edge.
The be on one?s feet of synthetic judgement could also be heralding fresh method components for client electronics that might one past change the iPhone.
OpenAI in Would possibly obtained the startup of former Apple design guru Jony Ive for $6.5 billion. The AI startup plans to build the subsequent technology of {hardware}, and alternative AI startups have exempted pins, pendants and glasses that depend on customers’ accentuation to regulate the gadgets.
Samsung gadgets, in addition to alternative Android telephones, get get entry to to Google’s Gemini, which is extensively thought to be to be one of the most highest AI fashions along OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Gemini has a number of options that customers can’t get with Siri and Apple Logic.
Blackard stated folding telephones, with their better shows, are smartly fitted to AI. Google’s circle-to-search property, which permits a consumer to easily circle one thing at the conceal that they’d like to be informed extra about, is an instance, Blackard stated.
On a Samsung folding telephone, he stated, customers can nonetheless see the unedited conceal with the content material they rotated, in addition to any other conceal with spare knowledge.
“It’s much more productive being able to go back and forth,” Blackard stated.
Buyers have frightened that Apple’s AI delays, together with its next-generation Siri that’s now scheduled to come back out subsequent time, may get started hurting gross sales. However many analysts say that Apple’s logo commitment and lock-in will give it a length of years ahead of iPhone consumers get started defecting for competition.
Chatterjee informed CNBC that Apple’s technique with gadgets is to attend till a era is in a position for the mainstream ahead of embracing it. That past is also now for foldable gadgets.
Apple has “never been about trying to be the first to market,” Chatterjee stated. “It’s about being watchful, seeing a technology mature, knowing that there are no big roadblocks to that technology adoption, and then moving ahead.”
