The importance of the iPhone in Apple’s accounts, prestige and image It’s hard to quantify exactly, but it’s indisputable that if those from Cupertino hadn’t seen the absolute success of their smartphone today, the situation for the company could be very different (and worse). I bet if Tim Cook was given the choice between losing his hand or Apple losing his iPhone, he would politely ask if he could at least choose which one (hands that is).

It is true that a company acts intelligently when tries to arouse the interest of users and potential customers in other devices and serviceshaving all your eggs in one basket has always been a very risky practice, they know it, and instead of falling into complacency, they are looking for ways to grow their catalog (in a measured way, yes, I repeat, we are talking about Apple) in order to reduce the impact iPhone sales to their accounts.

Now, of course, the fact that they are going to diversify does not mean that they will put down their smartphone, nor that they will resist the good news that it usually gives them. So we can imagine that these days they must have wine and roses in Cupertino, where they may even have stopped working for a few minutes. toast some figurines which show that the iPhone’s momentum remains unchanged now that more than 15 years have passed since its first generation arrived (in a very, very limited way) on the market.

If we talk about mobile operating systems, this is little debated, Android exceeds 70% of the global market share, while Apple remains around 27%. However, if we are talking about the best-selling brand, a report from Counterpoint Research tells us that in the fourth quarter of 2022 Apple overtook Samsung to become the number one smartphone vendor. More specifically, about 23% of smartphones sold during that period were iPhones. In the previous two quarters, Apple’s market share in this market was around 16%, so we are talking about a significant increase.

Of course, the main reason for this increase can be found in the launch of the iPhone 14 last September, and to understand the importance of the “pull” that the launch of this new generation meant for the whole market, you should know that only two of the six brands shown in the graph above increased their share on the market during the fourth quarter, AApple and Oppoalthough its growth was much lower than that of Cupertino.

Maybe Tim Cook was right after all when he said at the shareholder meeting that price is not an issue for iPhone users and that he would be willing to pay more than what it currently costs, if you feel the investment is justified, of course.