Largest Smartphone Vendors by 2025 Shipments

Note: What Is Driving the Smartphone Market?

Smartphones are the most widely owned consumer-electronics product on Earth — the global installed base now exceeds four billion devices, and manufacturers ship well over a billion new handsets every year. The table above ranks the brands that make those phones by how many units they shipped around the world in 2025, and it hides a lot of interesting dynamics behind the numbers. Here's what's actually going on.

What do "shipments" actually mean?

• Shipments count the phones a manufacturer sells to retailers, carriers and distributors — not the phones that reach a consumer's hand. There's a delay between the two.
• Because it's a sell-in number, it's a useful proxy for demand, but a vendor can "overship" one quarter and sit on inventory the next as retailers digest stock.
• Shipments and "sales" or "sell-through" differ, which is why one vendor can have big shipment numbers yet see weak retailer sell-out.
• Worldwide unit shipments hit about 1.25 billion in 2025 — the strongest annual level since 2021, up roughly 2% year on year.

Why Apple beats Samsung by a whisker

• Apple shipped an estimated 240.6 million iPhones in 2025, holding on as the world's largest smartphone vendor for a third consecutive year.
• Samsung finished a hair behind at around 238 million, snapping a streak of three straight annual declines by growing about 7%.
• The two giants are chasing each other within a few million units — the title of "world's largest phone maker" really is decided by a rounding error.
• Apple actually charges far more per phone, which is why its revenue and profit share far exceed its unit share of the market.

The battle of the challengers

• Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo jostle for the vital third-to-fifth spots, each selling roughly 100 to 165 million units.
• vivo climbed to fourth place for the first time, lifted by consistent success in India and its home market of China.
• OPPO slipped slightly and is set to absorb realme from 2026, gaining extra volume and retail muscle that could help it climb.
• HONOR, spun off from Huawei, grew about 11% to a record year, while Lenovo (with Motorola at the helm) also posted a record thanks to strengthening in emerging markets.

Why the top two are pulling away

• Apple and Samsung control nearly all the premium tier, where margins are fat and customers are sticky.
• They can afford the best supply-chain deals, custom chips and years of brand loyalty that mid-market rivals struggle to match.
• Chinese vendors generate enormous volume but earn thin profits, making them far more vulnerable to component-price spikes and price-sensitive shoppers.
• By late 2025, a "memory crisis" had pushed up DRAM and NAND costs dramatically — punishing low-end vendors while Apple and Samsung, with their premium mix, absorbed it far more easily.

Trends shaping the market

• AI on-device — vendors are pushing AI features like on-device assistants and photo editing into mid-range phones to justify upgrades.
• 5G expansion — faster networks in developing markets are driving upgrades among billions of users.
• Premiumization — buyers are choosing fewer, better phones and keeping them longer, so average selling prices keep rising.
• Foldables — still niche but growing; global foldable shipments roughly doubled year over year in 2025.
• China's influence — the mainland market declined slightly in 2025 as government subsidy effects faded, but it remains the biggest single battleground.

Quick tips for reading this data

• Look at year-on-year growth, not just absolute numbers — a small vendor growing 86% (like Nothing above) signals a fast riser.
• Unit share flatters budget brands; revenue and profit share tell you where the real money is made.
• Figures vary slightly between research firms (IDC, Counterpoint, Omdia, TrendForce) because each counts "shipments" or "production" a little differently — exact numbers can differ by a few million units.
• Regional results matter: Huawei reclaimed the top spot in China even while ranking lower globally, because most of its volume stays domestic.

Fun facts

• More people own a smartphone than own a car, a desktop computer or a television.
• Apple and Samsung together ship roughly as many phones as the rest of the top ten combined.
• The average smartphone is now replaced every three to four years, up from about two years a decade ago.
• About a quarter of all new smartphones in 2025 were sold in China, even as that market dipped slightly.