The iPhone XR was the Top-Selling Smartphone in Q3 2019

• iPhone XR takes the crown of the best-selling device in Q3 2019, leaving Samsung at 2nd place.
• The “affordable” iPhone XR has been a crowd favorite since its release and still remains a market winner.
• Apple is having a great year closure, with the demand for its products reaching very high levels.

According to Counterpoint data, the iPhone XR was the top-selling smartphone product globally in Q3 2019. The particular model was a big success from its launch, drawing an audience from the Android ecosystem and on to Apple’s camp, while it remains available for purchase even after the iPhone 11 series is launched. Right now, the “affordable” iPhone XR is priced at $599, and it looks like there are many people who find the offering alluring and competitive against later models. After all, the XR is powerful enough, can capture astonishing pictures, and it will keep on running the latest iOS version for a while.

As the following diagram shows, the market percentage that was captured by the iPhone XR during Q3 2019 was 3%, which is a pretty impressive figure. The second best-seller is the Samsung Galaxy A10, while the bigger and more powerful A50 comes third with 1.9%. The Oppo A9 sold a total of 1.6% of the global smartphone shipments in that period, and the Apple iPhone 11 which is the successor of the XR came fifth with a market share of 1.6%. Of course, Apple's most promising next-gen model was released on September 11, and its selling started on September 20, so it couldn’t have overtaken the sales of XR just yet.

Source: Counterpoint Research

All this is going on while the global smartphone sales have dropped by 11% compared to the Q3 2018, and the trend continues to point downwards. People are finding increasingly fewer reasons to buy the latest smartphone models, as the incremental upgrades that land each year are not convincing enough for the vast majority. The iPhone XR remains a “good enough” device that can still open the door to Apple’s ecosystem for many, so why pay double the price for a slightly better camera and battery life?

In general, 2019 has been a great year for Apple, and the tech giant is set to continue strong as we enter 2020. In November, we reported about Apple’s manufacturing partners not being able to keep up with the demand for their latest “AirPods Pro”, which is saying something. Yesterday, Sony announced that their production lines are operating 24 hours, non-stop, yet they can’t meet the demand to produce enough sensors for the newest range of iPhones. Of course, the fact that the iPhone 11 features double and triple camera modules have played a key role in that, but the essence remains that people want to buy more Apple products that we can make.

Do you have anything to comment on the above? Feel free to share your thoughts with us in the section down below, or on our socials, on Facebook and Twitter.