We usually get to know how well a phone is selling on the basis of its OS, but individual smartphone sales are often not known. Not in this case. A new report by Strategy Analytics reveals the best-selling Android smartphones of 2016 so far and the results are not shocking.
Samsung once again took the crown with its eye-catching Galaxy S7 Edge flagship which scored 13.3 million shipments worldwide or 2.3 percent of all Android shipments. This was followed by the entry-level Galaxy J2, which offers a non-HD display, with 13 million shipments. Samsung’s conventional Galaxy S7 itself was the third best-selling phone with 11.8 million shipments.
It is still far from a rosy ride for Samsung, which rivals such as the Huawei P9, OPPO R9 and Vivo X7 from China are catching up with it, which could eventually spell the end of its domination. Thankfully for Samsung its own sales are also growing well enough for the time being, going up to 77.6 million in the last quarter from 71.9 million a year ago.
Just for a comparison, Apple shipped 91.6 million phones in the first half of the year, which is a decline from 108.7 million from a year ago but still substantially larger nonetheless. Unlike Apple, Android continued to grow, from 552.2 million to 577.3 million from a year ago, indicating that the market still hasn’t topped out for most of the companies out there.