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Apple's iPhone 16 Was the Best Selling Smartphone in Q1 2025

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During the first quarter of 2025, Apple's iPhone 16 was the best selling smartphone in the world, according to estimates provided by Counterpoint Research. After the iPhone 16, the iPhone 16 Pro Max, iPhone 16 Pro, and the iPhone 15 were the other top four smartphones. Samsung's Galaxy A16 5G took the fifth spot in the rankings.

counterpoint-q1-2025-smartphone-sales.jpg

Last year, it was Apple's Pro iPhone that was the best seller. In Q1 2024, the iPhone 15 Pro Max was the top selling smartphone, narrowly beating out the iPhone 15.

Apple has narrowed the gap between its standard smartphones and its Pro lineup in terms of performance and feature set. The iPhone 16 has an A18 chip that's almost as fast as the A18 Pro in the iPhone 16 Pro Max, and it also has the same Action button and Camera Control button.

Of the top 10 best selling smartphones in Q1 2025, Apple secured five of them. The top four, and then the 10th spot with the iPhone 16 Plus. Samsung's flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S25 Ultra, took the 7th spot, while the other smartphones on the list are lower cost options.

The $600+ iPhone 16e was only on sale for part of the quarter, but it did take the sixth spot in Counterpoint's top 10 list for March 2025, which was the first full month that it was available for purchase. The iPhone 16e is expected to sell better in its first year than the iPhone SE did during its first year thanks to its higher-end feature set.

Counterpoint's report focuses on rankings rather than unit sales, and while it does not break down sales by country, it does say that the iPhone 16 sold particularly well in Japan and the Middle East and Africa (MEA) market. In China, the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max suffered because of government subsidies favoring lower-cost devices and competition from Chinese companies like Huawei.

Article Link: Apple's iPhone 16 Was the Best Selling Smartphone in Q1 2025
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/05/28/iphone-16-q1-2025-best-selling-smartphone/
iPhone 16 for Q1 2025 but it will be iPhone 16e for the most of 2025

winxmac said:
iPhone XR - disliked by tech reviewers but the best selling iPhone of 2018 to 2019 before the release of iPhone 11 series

iPhone 11 - disliked by tech reviewers but the best selling iPhone of 2019 to 2020 before the release of iPhone 12 series

iPhone 16e - disliked by tech reviewers but the best selling iPhone of 2025 before the release of iPhone 17 series

I also did not like the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus at first, but if I have the money, that is what I will buy to replace my iPhone 11 Pro Max
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jz0309 said:
yup, a clear indication that Apple is lagging, not innovativing, overpriced and doomed ...
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It still surprises me how the tides have turned. Remember when Apple was the "other / weird / non-standard" brand?

I think that once people have tasted Apple's attention to reliability, particularly with mobile phones, they aren't wiling to risk that safe experience.

If only Apple could provide the same attention to detail to parts of macOS that have gone neglected for far too long.
 
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coolfactor said:
I think that once people have tasted Apple's attention to reliability, particularly with mobile phones, they aren't wiling to risk that safe experience.
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Being completely candid, I genuinely appreciate Apple's hardware. The MacBook Air is probably my favorite design for a laptop. At the same time, I hold the opinion that Apple's software (their operating systems) are lagging. They are filled with bugs; not show-stopping bugs, but little things (visual glitches, poor UI/UX, etc.). It's at the point now that while I do like the hardware, I've started using alternatives because they simply work better.

In the last few months I've been using a Galaxy S25 and it's been fantastic. I haven't experienced any UI glitches, so far only one bug occasionally surfaces (the Clock app doesn't let me snooze my alarm with the volume buttons sometimes), but it's otherwise been zero issues. Battery life is also substantially better. Compared to my iPhone it's just a much better experience. If I consider that I paid less after tax for the S25 than an iPhone 16e before tax, I can't honestly recommend iPhone unless there is a particular use-case that requires it.

To each their own, of course. I do hope that Apple starts putting the same amount of focus on their operating systems as they do on their custom silicon.
 
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Dave-Z said:
Being completely candid, I genuinely appreciate Apple's hardware. The MacBook Air is probably my favorite design for a laptop. At the same time, I hold the opinion that Apple's software (their operating systems) are lagging. They are filled with bugs; not show-stopping bugs, but little things (visual glitches, poor UI/UX, etc.). It's at the point now that while I do like the hardware, I've started using alternatives because they simply work better.

In the last few months I've been using a Galaxy S25 and it's been fantastic. I haven't experienced any UI glitches, so far only one bug occasionally surfaces (the Clock app doesn't let me snooze my alarm with the volume buttons sometimes), but it's otherwise been zero issues. Battery life is also substantially better. Compared to my iPhone it's just a much better experience. If I consider that I paid less after tax for the S25 than an iPhone 16e before tax, I can't honestly recommend iPhone unless there is a particular use-case that requires it.

To each their own, of course. I do hope that Apple starts putting the same amount of focus on their operating systems as they do on their custom silicon.
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Completely agree. I find Apple laptops way more reliable (relative to the competition) than I do their phones. The reliability of iOS seemed to drop pretty hard around iOS 13 (in my observation) and has never really returned to being as reliable as it once was. I still use an iPhone, more so because I like my Apple Watch than for anything special that the iPhone itself offers.

I'm not a developer or a hardware engineer or anything, I'm just a longtime customer and tech enthusiast. I've used just about every platform out there and have settled on Apple stuff for the most part, but I wouldn't say Apple is really dominating in reliability these days.
 
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eoblaed said:
I remember when Apple was mocked after the '07 Macworld keynote, especially by Microsoft and Nokia. Essentially, "what does Apple know about making phones; it'll fail spectacularly". Whoops.
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And Blackberry, who was very certain the iPhone would never pan out (the story is that they assumed it was a demo that must have involved a hidden cable to an off-stage device doing all the work). Good thing that Blackberry and Windows Phone still reign supreme.
 
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The title really sells it short. Yes, the iPhone 16 was the best selling phone, but iPhones held the top 4 spots, with last year's base model outselling every competitor. And if the graph is scaled properly, it shows the top 3 iPhones each outselling the nearest non-Apple competitor by about 2-to-1.

Apple gets a boost by having the competitors spread over a bunch of brands and models, but that's still a heck of an achievement.
 
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Eric_WVGG said:
it's funny that the Pro models consistently outsell the “regular” models.

IMO the iPhone 16 is a "worst of both worlds" model. Not fancy enough to justify the price jump over the 16E, and not cheap enough to dissuade many buyers from getting the Pro.
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I feel like there are enough reasons to justify the 16 price jump over the 16e. Ultrawide camera, Dynamic Island, MagSafe, camera control (even though no one uses that lol), an arguably better modem, feature set, and many more tiny but useful features...
 
iPhone 16 is a banger. Not for us nerds but for everyday people who want a really good camera, battery life, 5-6 years of support, great screen and pleasing design. Just face it, iPhone isn't for us for tech enthusiasts anymore. Whatever the next platform is, will be.
 
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CarlJ said:
The title really sells it short. Yes, the iPhone 16 was the best selling phone, but iPhones held the top 4 spots, with last year's base model outselling every competitor. And if the graph is scaled properly, it shows the top 3 iPhones each outselling the nearest non-Apple competitor by about 2-to-1.

Apple gets a boost by having the competitors spread over a bunch of brands and models, but that's still a heck of an achievement.
Click to expand...
Part of the reason is that there is only one iOS device vendor, but many Android device vendors. Apple still has only around 20% smartphone market share globally (https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insights/global-smartphone-share/).
 
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Jay Tee said:
I haven't noticed any reliability issues. What is your main example of this ?
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Just general bugs, all over the place, all the time.

Just 20 mins ago I was scanning documents to my Mac with my iPhone and after scanning 3 docs, the camera connection just wouldn't initiate for the 4th one. I had to reboot my phone to get it to work.
My phone drops bluetooth headphone connections more than it used to (Sony and Beats).
General issues around automated shortcuts randomly not running.
Apps getting kicked out of memory all the time, even when there's absolutely no reason they should have been kicked.
iMessage bugs, where message won't send as an iMessage even though the phones are next to each other on the same wifi network and will send just fine after a reboot.
Airdrop just not seeing a device moments after sending a file, or sending a file and the prompt to accept will not show up on the receiving device (admittedly this happens across all Apple devices, AirDrop has fallen a long way).
The keyboard lagging when typing and then springing to catch up with dozens of keypresses seemingly happening all at once.

This isn't a comprehensive list, just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I'm not saying things were perfect pre-iOS 13 and now they're unusable, but there seems to have been a general increase in the number of bugs I've encountered and the number of longstanding bugs that don't seem to get fixed. iOS 13 was particularly bad at launch and got better with the point releases, but ever since that original bad release, I don't think things ever got back to being as stable or reliable as I perceived them to be before that point.
 
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