Counterpoint released the list of the best-selling smartphones of 2022 and we were quite surprised to see that Apple led the market in an overwhelming manner. I’m not exaggerating The iPhone occupied eight of the ten positions of the best-selling terminals this year and lost only two positions to Samsung, which achieved significant success with the Galaxy A13, a budget smartphone that has an average price of 149 euros in the basic configuration.

See the attached chart. On the left we have the ten best-selling smartphones of 2022 and on the right the position they occupied in each month of the year. So, iPhone 13, which was the best-selling smartphone of 2022, remained the leader between January and August, dropped to second place in September, and was in fourth place from October to December, both inclusive. The second position was held by the iPhone 13 Pro Max from January to August, it fell to seventh place in September and October, and ended November and December in the 11th and 15th best-selling smartphones.

If you are wondering what happened in September to cause this change in the position of the two best-selling smartphones, the answer is very simple that Apple launched the new iPhone 14 and they cannibalized the sales of the iPhone 13. In this sense, we have a very curious fact, and that the iPhone 14 Pro Max was such a huge success that despite arriving in September managed to position itself as the third best-selling smartphone of 2022.

The iPhone 14 Pro also had better reception than iPhone 13 Pro, although it was below the iPhone 14 and didn’t even beat the iPhone 13 Pro. Strangely enough, the iPhone SE 2022, a terminal that some have described as a failure and selling little, ranked ninth as the best-selling smartphone and ranked as the fifth best-selling smartphone in August. Keep in mind that all of these figures are relative sales worldwide.

Looking at Samsung, we see that The Galaxy A13 was very successful between January and September, but it has suffered a significant drop in sales since October. The opposite happened with the Galaxy A03, starting weak in March and gaining momentum in the following months, peaking in August when it became the fourth best-selling smartphone. From there, it again suffered a downward trend.

According to Counterpoint, big names in the smartphone sector will use this year to net stock and better improve its product catalog, a movement that will not only seek to optimize costs, but will have as its main objective minimize cannibalization between models that are too similar or that offer too different values ​​and have very similar prices. That the Galaxy S22 doesn’t appear on this list says a lot about the loss of interest that Samsung’s flagship series is suffering from.