Apple's Smartphone Market Share Shows iPhone Sales Have Room To Run

With a market cap of $633.6 billion, Apple Inc. AAPL is the world’s largest publicly traded company. The iPhone is its single most successful product of all time. Yet despite the iPhone’s massive success, there is still plenty of room for Apple to grow its smartphone market share.

As of Q2 2016, Apple held only about 11.8 percent of the global smartphone market share. In fact, Apple held roughly half the market share of global smartphone leader SAMSUNG ELECTRONIC KRW500 SSNLF. The most recent numbers show Samsung with 22.4 percent of the smartphone market.

Related Link: Perfect Storm Of iPhone News Sends Apple To New 2016 Highs

Six years ago, the smartphone market looked a lot different. In Q2 of 2010, Nokia Corp (ADR) NOK was the global leader with a whopping 37.3 percent of the global market followed by BlackBerry Ltd BBRY at 17.4 percent. Samsung’s market share at the time was just 5.6 percent, but Apple’s stood at 13 percent.

As Nokia and Blackberry fell by the wayside, Samsung pounced at the opportunity to become the global smartphone leader, while Apple actually lost a bit of market share.

Apple’s stock recently climbed to its highest point of 2016 following a major recall of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 devices. Reports have surfaced that Galaxy Note batteries have been exploding and bursting into flames. Apple investors are hoping that customer fears could leave Samsung’s leading smartphone market share vulnerable, and Apple can seize the opportunity and climb to the top of the global smartphone market.

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