Samsung and Apple gained share as shipments fell 20%

Samsung did not take the third quarter by shipping more phones than it did a year ago. It took a larger share of a market that shipped far fewer of them.

Counterpoint Research's preliminary Market Monitor, released on 12 October and written up the same day by 9to5Mac, puts global smartphone shipments 20 percent below the third quarter of 2025. That is the lowest July-to-September total since 2012. Android Central's account of the same note, published on 13 October, matches the 20 percent drop. It also reports that Samsung's own shipments fell 3 percent, and that Samsung stayed first.

The useful number is the mix, not the headline decline. 9to5Mac, citing Counterpoint, has Samsung at 23 percent of shipments and Apple at 22 percent, up from 18 percent a year earlier. Counterpoint says it is the first time Apple has crossed 20 percent in any third quarter. Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo followed at 10, 9 and 8 percent, and each of those shares fell. Samsung and Apple together accounted for 45 percent of what did ship, in a quarter when the industry shipped a fifth less.

Shilpi Jain, a Counterpoint senior analyst, said in the note, as quoted by Android Central: "Consumers are holding on to their devices longer than estimated, increasingly considering refurbished devices and prioritizing higher-value devices." She also described an extreme memory shortage pushing the market into a more selective phase. Android Central's reading of the cause is specific. DRAM and NAND have been pulled toward AI infrastructure, phone bills of materials have risen, and manufacturers have preferred profit to filling the channel with cheap handsets.

FoneArena's write-up of the same estimates calls Samsung's move to a 23 percent share the largest gain among major manufacturers, alongside that 3 percent drop in Samsung's own units. A share can rise while the absolute number falls. That is this quarter.

Android Central writes that Samsung's market share "increased by 23%." The figure in 9to5Mac and FoneArena is a 23 percent share. Those are not the same claim, and a 23-point jump would have put Samsung somewhere it plainly is not. This desk is using the share. A second gap is the missing census. The Counterpoint note, as these three outlets quote it, does not publish a worldwide unit total. Twenty percent down, without the base, is a rate. It is not a count of phones, and it should not be turned into one.

Apple's missing boxes have a cause that is not the memory invoice. Counterpoint, via 9to5Mac, said the volume decline was largely the absence of a standard iPhone 18, so the launch-month channel fill was smaller than the full iPhone 17 lineup a year earlier. Counterpoint adds that the iPhone 18 Pro models launched more strongly than their predecessors, particularly in China and India, so the missing base model explains much of the volume gap. Android Central credits Samsung's share with early demand for the Galaxy Z Fold 8 series and with component supply that still reached the Galaxy A range. Those are different advantages. One is a thinner lineup. The other is breadth plus a foldable with strong early demand.

Scarce memory gets allocated to phones that can carry a higher price. A company with a wide catalogue can point that allocation at the models that still clear the bill. A company whose volume sat in the cheap tiers cannot. That fits the pattern in which the shipment shares of Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo shrank in the same quarter the two premium vendors gained, even though Samsung and Apple also shipped fewer phones than they did a year earlier. Buyers stretching the replacement cycle, which is Jain's point, do the rest of the work. Refurbished interest is the other door, and it is a demand fact in the note, not a retail inventory this desk has counted.

None of this dates a recovery. Android Central says the note does not expect one until component costs and supply improve. That is a condition. It is not a quarter. An earlier read of Europe's carrier channel in the second quarter describes a related memory squeeze through a different door, sell-through at carriers rather than global factory shipments from July to September. The two numbers should not be stacked as if they measured the same thing.

For someone buying this month, the 20 percent is not a coupon. It is a reason the inexpensive phone may be the one a brand stopped building, and a reason the flagship share gains are not a sale.