Most data concerning mobile phones is based on either shipment volumes or on phone sales value.  Both of these metrics are able to provide a short or long-term view of the popularity of a particular phone model or brand and can help to understand sales trends, all of which are helpful in understanding the mobile phone market on a general basis.  That said, neither metric gives any understanding of usage, a more esoteric but necessary metric for  more detailed view of the mobile phone business.  Usage statistics can indicate a number of points when trying to gain insight into the mobile market, such as:

• Penetration
• Mobile vs. Desktop
• Connection Frequency
• Content Consumption
• Focus for Advertising

In the table below we show those brands that have the most activity on the internet, meaning the user either clicked on a website or used search engine results to visit a website.  The tracking system has tracking code on over 1.5 million websites from which it derives such information.  We have eliminated any brand that has a share less than 0.11% to simplify the table and we note that the brands shown represent over 99% of mobile usage in each country.  The five countries indicated in the table represent 45.78% of the global population and show how different brand penetration is for each country.  In terms of the number of available brands (greater than 0.1% share), Pakistan has the most (21), while both the US and China have 17, India 18, and Indonesia only 13.
The US has the most brand loyalty, with Apple (AAPL), the top brand with a 57.6% usage penetration, more than twice the leader in any other country, and is also the leader, albeit with a smaller share, in China.  In the US the top two usage brands, Apple and Samsung (005930.KS), represent 80.6% of tracked website traffic, a grater share than the combined total (top 5) share in all other countries and over 50% of the worldwide share.  When averaging brands across the five countries (unweighted) Apple still maintains the greatest share (20.1%), followed by Samsung (14.1%), Xiaomi (1810.HK) 11.1%), Vivo (pvt) (10.9%), and Unknown (9.9%).  Without Unknown, 5th place went to Oppo (pvt) (9.3%).

While the absolute share for each brand changes slightly each month, real changes in usage brand share take time as can be seen in XXX below.  Standouts are Samsung (Upper Orange line), who has been losing share since 2023 and Huawei (Light Blue)who, under US trade sanctions, has been losing share since 2020.  Overall, during the 5-year period those who lost share were Samsung, Huawei, LG (), Nokia (), Lenovo (), Sony (SNE), and ASUS (), while those that gained share were Apple, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Motorola (), RealMe (pvt), OnePlus (), Tecno (), and Infinix ().  We note that only one Chinese brand has been in the loss column (Husaei) while other than Apple, all the gainers were Chinese brands.

The smartphone business is a tough one.  With hundreds of brands looking to catch a consumer’s eye and feature sets that grow longer with each new model, brands struggle to find something new and exciting each new model cycle.  Cameras were big a few years back, with phones having up to 6 cameras, but multiple cameras began to take up room needed for other components, so the fad moved from camera numbers to camera resolution, with current high-end phones in the 200MP resolution class.  To put that into perspective a 200MP camera has 16,384 x 12,288 pixels in a 1” x 1.2” package (18,369 Pixels per Inch).  But the challenge continues, as AI throws another variable into the smartphone mix.
It would seem that brands could be a bit wary about how AI will play out on mobile devices as it is quite difficult to tell whether the Ai flavor-of-the-month is pushing consumers to buy a new phone, so Samsung (005930.KS) has taken another track, and thin is in.  The just announced Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge is a mere 5.8mm thick, a 29.3% reduction from this year’s Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra flagship smartphone. Here are just a few of the gushingly positive comments the tech press has made about the just announced Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, their newly designed ‘super thin’ smartphone.

• "Thinner than a credit card..." - The Economic Times
• "Samsung's Galaxy S25 Edge is already turning heads in the tech world...for its sheer thinness." - The Economic Times
• "The S25 Edge is one of Samsung's thinnest flagships to date." - Techloy
• "The Shockingly Thin Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge Feels Great to Hold..." - PCMag

But while ‘thin’ might be the new rallying cry for smartphone designs, thin has been around for a long time, and the 5.8mm thick Galaxy S25 Edge is barely a contender for thinnest.  The earliest ‘thin’ phone we could find was the Samsung U100 that was released in February of 2007, 18 years ago, while this baby was a fat 5.9mm thick, it was certainly the first that met our criteria of being under 6mm.  That said, the real winners are the pack of contenders at the Wegovy-like 5.1mm, a staggering 12% thinner than the new Samsung S25 Edge!  In fact all of the smartphones that were 5.1mm (the smallest we can find) were released 10 years ago in 2015, a period in time when there was less smartphone hardware, less heat generation, and smaller batteries to take up space inside the case.  5.1mm is 0.2” or a bit less than ¼ of an inch.
We are sure that the ‘thin’ trend will have some sustainability, at least until something else comes along, as Apple (AAPL) (see below) is expected to be releasing the iPhone 17 Air, a substitute for the iPhone Plus model, with the iPhone 17 Air rumored to be only 5.5mm thick.  If both Samsung and Apple follow the trend, almost all others will join until one of the three largest components, the battery, the display, and the camera modules hits a limit.  Batteries can be made thinner by increasing the length and width, which, in theory, should make it easier for the battery to dissipate heat, but at the same time the thinner phone allows less room for the thermal interface that transfers the battery heat to the frame of the phone, so it’s a tradeoff.  The display itself is quite thin but the connector that attaches the display to the internal circuit board is also a limiting factor, and lastly the camera module needs a certain amount of depth to operate properly, also a gating factor.
All in, while thin is in currently, we expect thin as a smartphone feature to run its course relatively quickly unless primary component producers are able to work dimensional magic without compromising performance.  There is also the feeling of holding the phone in your hand when you use it, which changes with thickness and weight, but in a device that must fit into a pocket, less is more.

​As we noted yesterday Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) was expected to release what might turn out to be the replacement for the long-lived Samsung Galaxy S Plus flagship smartphone that has been a part of the company’s flagship line-up on an off since 2011.  While Samsung and many other brands have strict rules about suppliers and employees leaking information about a product before its release, leaking’ information about upcoming smartphones has become both a marketing tool and a game of cat and mouse. As can be seen by our comparison of yesterday’s (pre-release) feature set and today’s actual feature set, much of the key information about the Galaxy S25 Edge was already circulating and turned out to be largely correct.
Below we show our feature set list from yesterday and the actual feature list from the release.  We highlight those features that were not correct in yellow.  As can be seen, we were off by 3/100ths of an inch on the length and 1/100th of an inch on the width.  The Edge can handle both Sim types, not just one as we expected, the display has an LTPO (Low temperature Poly-Oxide) backplane (we were unsure if it would be LTPS or LTPO), and the initial price will be at the low end of our expectations at $1,100 for both memory configurations.  Other than those errors, the device features seem to have been well telegraphed.

The feature set is mostly as expected and even a bit better, the price is exactly between the price of the S25 and the S25 Ultra and the same price as the S25 Plus (512GB).  Of course lower would have been better, but in the case of the S25 Edge it seems Samsung is trying to update design rather than create a new price category.  The Galaxy FE (Fan Edition), which was released in September of last year, creates a lower-cost bridge between the Galaxy S25 series and Samsung’s mid and lower price tier lines.

Samsung (005930.KS) has been producing a ‘plus’ model of its flagship Galaxy S line on and off since 2011, substituting Galaxy Edge, Galaxy Lite, Galaxy Active and even the Galaxy FE in the years when the company did not release a Galaxy S+ version, yet since 2017 the Galaxy Plus model has appeared each year along with the standard Galaxy S and Galaxy Ultra models of its flagship line.  Tomorrow, Samsung will announce the Galaxy Edge, a new and improved Edge that has the opportunity to replace the Galaxy S Plus going forward.
The Galaxy S Plus has been the underperformer of the three flagship models, and this year Samsung is looking to see if a new Galaxy Edge model might be a better value for consumers than the S Plus going forward.  There are lots of Galaxy Edge features that have been leaked or speculated on, so we put together a comparison of the current Galaxy S25+ and the upcoming S25 Edge.  We note that the Edge feature list could change upon its release.  We note also that the concept behind the Edge is a thinner, lighter, sleeker’ phone with most of the features of the Plus, with less cameras but higher resolution ones.

According to suppliers, of the 37.7m Galaxy S25 series phones to be produced this year, the standard Galaxy S25 will represent 36.1%, the Ultra, 46.2% and the Plus only 17.89% based on expected demand, so the question will be whether the new Galaxy 25 Edge will be able to outsell the Plus.  If the Edge catches on with consumers, we expect that the Galaxy Plus will join the Samsung Neos, the Samsung Minis, and the Samsung Actives, all of whom have been sent to that farm upstate where all of the disabled and sickly hamsters are happily living out their retirement days.

In order to account for unusual or outlying estimates, we average smartphone data from a number of sources to arrive at quarterly and yearly totals.  Our aggregated smartphone shipment total for 2024 is 1.223 billion units, up 5.1%  y/y.  Based on our data Apple (AAPL) edged out Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) by 0.6% in terms of unit volume share (224.8m units for Apple and 223.5m units for Samsung), although Samsung had a higher share in every quarter except the 4th, which is when Apple releases the new iPhone.  They were followed by Xiaomi (1810.HK) with 169m units, Oppo (pvt) with 106.1m, and Transsion (688036.CH), rounding out the top 5 with 102.4m units.  Falling out of the top five last year were Vivo (pvt) and Honor (pvt), with Vivo only 1.4m units less than Transsion.
While our final unit volume number might be a bit different from others, we note that back in late 2023, when predictions are first made for the following year, they ranged from up 3% to up 6.2%, with most in the 3% to 4% range, so even with our 5.1% average increase, the year was a bit better than expected, above the trendline, and a welcome relief after two down years.  Expectations for this year center around 2.1% to 2.4% unit volume growth.  That said, our data indicates that 1Q unit volume was up 1%, and we believe there was some pre-tariff buying in that number.  We are a bit less optimistic than the estimates, but the US/China trade situation puts everything in flux.

In 2024 China shipped 314.6m mobile phones, up 8.7% y/y, marking the 2nd consecutive year that shipments have increased y/y.  86.4% of phones shipped were 5G models, the highest for any year (2023 was 82.2%), and 85.6% of shipments were domestic (Chinese) brands.  As can be seen in Figure 1 and Figure 2, after a dismal 2022 and 2023, China’s smartphone market has recovered, albeit modestly.
So far this year (Jan/Feb data only) January smartphone shipments were down 14.2% y/y, but February shipments were up 37.9% y/y and above the 5-year average by over 25%.  On January 20, the Chinese government added smartphones to its “New for Old” consumer product subsidy program, which we expect accounted for the strong February results.  While we expect continued strength in smartphone shipments in the domestic Chinese market, we expect consumers took advantage of the subsidy at the onset, and front-loaded February shipments.  March is  typically a strong shipment month, so we can see how much front-loading was done in February through the March shipments when they are released.
While the domestic situation for Chinese smartphone brands improves, the current trade war with the US, despite recent smartphone exceptions, still requires that Chinese smartphone brands entering the US pay an import tariff of between 20% and 25%, which, unless absorbed by the brand, will make them less attractive against other non-Chinese brands.  The most common Chinese brands entering the US are:

• One Plus (pvt) – Offered through all three major US carriers, although estimates for US sales are between 5% and 10% of company totals.
• TCL (000100.CH) – Typically sold unlocked.  Estimates are for between 10% and 15% of total sales to the US.
• Motorola – Owned by China’s Lenovo (992.HK) and sold through all US carriers and retailers.  Roughly 20% to 30% of total sales (estimated) are in the US.
• ZTE (000063.CH) – While most consumers believe ZTE smartphones are banned in the US (They were in 2018, but they paid a $1.4b fine and the ban was lifted), pre-paid phones from Metro (TMUS) are made by ZTE, but the numbers are small.

While other Chinese smartphone brand phones are sold in the US, the numbers are small and most have no official presence in the US.  However, even though  the recent exemptions  from additional tariffs have given the Chines smartphone brands shown above a bit of breathing room, the administration has promised to ‘investigate’ the matter further, essentially threatening new phone tariffs.  Chinese brands already work for very tight margins, so should any new smartphone tariffs be levied on Chinese brands, they will likely have to pass most of the incremental cost on to consumers.
That said, they have one thing in their favor, Apple (AAPL) who has been able to lobby the President to postpone another massive Chinese tariff increase.  While Apple is still a competitor, it has considerable production in China, and therefore works toward the same goals as Chinese brands in this instance.  As Apple continues to shift iPhone production away from China that will dissipate, leaving Chinese brands to fend for themselves, an unenviable position at best, at least for the next 3.5 years.

Yesterday Samsung (005930.KS) announced that the new Galaxy S25 flagship line would be based on the new Qualcomm (QCOM) Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, the first mobile device to use this processor.  This chipset competes directly with Mediatek’s (2454.TT) Dimensity 9400 chipset, which is already the basis for 3 smartphone models from Vivo (pvt) and 3 from Oppo (pvt) that were released in October of last year.  The characteristics of each of those chipsets are listed below, along with a number of benchmarks that compare performance and details on what those benchmarks capture.  However while there are benchmarks that score the AI related performance of smartphones, there does not seem to be a recognized benchmark that rates the performance of the chipsets themselves in terms of AI performance. 
We believe this is due to the integration of the AI into each phone’s hardware and software, which can influence AI performance, along with the fact that the Snapdragon 8 Elite is quite new.  Using just the AI benchmarks for the few models that are based on the Dimensity 9400 (average) and comparing that to the previous Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, it shows that the Dimensity has just under twice the AI performance of the older Snapdragon, so we have to assume that the 8 Elite Ai benchmark will at least match that once the Galaxy S25 line is benchmarked.  In the interim, the chipset comparisons are the only benchmarks to compare the performance of the processors.

Test Bench Criteria

• GeekBench 6 – Real-world tasks
  • Image Processing – Applying filters, resizing images, etc.
  • Machine Learning – Training & running ML models.
  • Augmented Reality – Processing & rendering AR.
• AnTuTu 10 – Combined Workloads
  • Image Processing – Rendering 3D scenes
  • Video Editing – Processing & encoding video files
  • Multitasking – Switching between apps & performing multiple tasks
• Wild Life Extreme (GPU)
  • Frame Rate – Higher frame rate implies smoother graphics
  • Graphics Quality – Details, texture, lighting, effects
• AI-Benchmark
  • Object Recognition – Object, facial and scene recognition
  • OCR – Character recognition
  • Effects – Deblur, Denoise, Bokeh

While the structure of these two chipsets are different, there performance on the test bench is very close, and that seems to indicate that Mediatek is getting close to closing the gap in terms of phone performance.  However, as AI functions are added to these devices, the need for larger die size, higher densities, and more memory affect the cost and yield as the NPU becomes a larger part of the chipset.  Ideally the NPU should have a dedicated core with an instruction set specifically designed for the NPU but the complexity of the design and production of such a chipset is not economically feasible yet.  For now chipset NPUs share the cores with device processes, but the current drive toward on-device Ai processing intensifies the impact on overall device performance.  This leads to eventual chipset designs with a dedicated NPU core or a hybrid approach with a dedicated NPU core and main core sharing the load.  With each of these improvements comes more manufacturing complexity and cost, but if AI is going to drive a mobile device replacement cycle, these improvements will have to continue with each chipset iteration.
Each of the chipsets below contained an NPU, and while NPU ‘size’ is a function of a number of factors, the NPU affects cost.  We expect it will continue to be an increasingly large component of the overall cost of subsequent chipsets, and, if the Samsung Galaxy line is any indication, smartphone brands have yet to try to recoup the incremental cost.  We expect that, at the smartphone level, consumers will assume that the added functionality that AI adds is already built into the cost of the device.  They have learned over the years that the incremental changes in each smartphone generation (50MP camera to a 100MP camera, or 6.7” display to a 6.8” display) do not seem to add to the device cost, so why should they think that AI is different, especially as AI looks to the user as software, not a visible physical change…  Another slice out of smartphone brand margins.

Samsung (005930.KS) announced its flagship smartphone line for 2025, the Galaxy S25 series today.  While the event detailed a number of hardware improvements, the real focus was on (not surprisingly) AI.  It seems that while Samsung continues to upgrade hardware to maintain a competitive stance against Chinese smartphone brands, we believe they understand that the incremental hardware improvements made each year are not enough to stimulate consumer to upgrade unless their phone begins to age out.  Foldables represent a new mobile category but due to their high price, volumes are relatively low, so it is essential that major brands maintain a flagship line to offset mid-range, lower margin lines.
There are times when hardware improvements can be a driver for consumers, as were OLED displays when they were new to the mobile world, and multiple cameras back a few years ago. But at this juncture, even OLED displays cannot be much larger and there is no new display technology on the near-term horizon that is appreciably different from what is available today.  Higher resolution cameras will always be possible as semiconductor technology improves, as will chipsets, CPUs, and GPUs, but other than foldables, mobile phone hardware will improve slowly and slowly does not excite consumers.
Smartphone software is in a similar position.  Smartphone applications have changed little over the past few years and do almost nothing to convince consumers to upgrade their mobile devices, but Ai for mobile devices is developing quickly and represents a platform where smartphone brands can compete and attract attention.  Ai does need processing power but Qualcomm (QCOM), Mediatek (2454.TT), Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), and Samsung continue to adapt their chipsets to the needs of AI, and while in the true sense, AI is a hardware-based system, on a mobile device it appears to consumers as software and requires relatively little hardware or mechanical changes or design restrictions.  However AI represents change and change in the CE market is something every marketing department looks toward to sell more devices.
Samsung seems to understand the fact that there are two AI’s.  One, answers your questions and interacts directly with users, while the other works silently in the background.  But they also seem to understand that the two should be working together and if there was anything to be taken away from the Samsung S25 event, it was that Samsung is interested in merging those two AI processes.  This not only improves the user’s experience with the phone but lessens the need for breakthrough hardware or software application improvement to attract consumers.  By leveraging Ai to allow applications on the phone to work together, the applications seem to be improved, even if they are not, and the ability of the AI to control or direct applications without the user having to open an application for each task is an improvement worth buying a new phone for.
Samsung’s multi-modal Ai allows the user to speak to the Ai directly (voice or even audio) and gives the AI the ability to create ‘agents’ that perform tasks that the user would typically have to do by pausing what they are doing to open a separate application.  Here’s an example.  The user is listening to a conference call which happens to be in Korean.  The Ai translates the call in real time but also compiles a transcript of the call.  When the call is finished the user tells the AI to summarize the call and reviews the AI summary.  The user tells the AI to change the 3rd paragraph to be more concise and reviews the change.  The user then tells the Ai to write a cover letter describing the circumstances of the call and to send the cover letter and the transcript summary to those in the ‘Level 2 Client’ list. 
Rather than having to open a number of applications to complete each part of the full task, the user either read or listened to the AI during each step and opened no applications.  The AI interfaced with the necessary applications and completed each task.  The system also gives the option to allow the Ai to collect information from other applications and devices in the Samsung ecosystem that can help it build a detailed profile of the user in order to make better or more personalized suggestions.
This can only happen when the AI is integrated into applications and Samsung has the advantage of having a recognizable enough brand that users are willing to use Samsung applications on its phones, along with a variety of externally developed applications.  Samsung offers external developers a number of tools to give them access to Samsung’s One UI 7, the user interface that sits on top of Android and provides the hooks to the AI, but there is nothing better than having that interface and the applications themselves developed in-house.  Only Samsung, Apple, and Google have the ability to tie their hardware and AI to such large application bases, with both Apple and Samsung concentrating on processing AI on device whenever possible.
As noted Samsung said all the right things about its AI at the Galaxy S25 event but everyday use can be much different from well produced event videos.  The Galaxy S25 family is now on pre-order and will be available in stores on February 7, at which point we should be able to get a better idea as to whether the phones live up to their marketing pitch.  The good news is that if they do, there is no premium being charged for the AI capabilities as the phones are priced the same as last year’s models, a plus for consumers.  Below we show only the differences between the hardware in the Galaxy S25 and last year’s Galaxy S24.

⁎ The 4th main camera (ultrawide) in the S25 Ultra is 50 MP f/1.9 while the 4th mani camera in the S24 is 12MP f/2.2.  The other three cameras are the same.
​

​IDC is out with early predictions for the semiconductor market for 2025, expecting a 16% increase in value this year to $779.8b.  Inside of that number are expectations for 24% growth in the memory market, with DRAM expected to be up 30.2% to $118b, with HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) for AI the driver.  As a contrast, they predict that the smartphone market will grow only 3.3% this year, primarily in 2H as inventory levels are worked down, but the datacenter market will see 23.9% growth, with that jumping to 33.6% if you include the cloud and enterprise markets.
As we have noted previously, Samsung, the leader in the memory market, has been unable to capitalize on that leadership and has been losing ground to competitors, SK Hynix (000660.KS) and Micron (MU) in this very competitive market.  Samsung has had problems with heat and power consumption in its HBM3e 8 and 12-layer products that caused yield issues and qualification delays at Nvidia (NVDA), contributing to the recent weakness, and among the pressures that have lead to Samsung’s recent executive level parings.  The head of Samsung’s memory group made a public apology for the shortfall in 4Q’24, leading one to believe that even more intense pressure continues for Samsung to right the problems in the semiconductor division, and it seems they are taking additional steps toward other issues that might be contributing to the problems with the company’s semiconductor production.
Samsung has been developing a more advanced memory product (D1b) that is based on a 10nm node.  They have been producing D1b memory, which is used in its DDR5 memory products, on a 12nm node since late 2024, which itself was delayed by almost a year.  This node change has raised expectations  about the 10nm product, based on higher density and even higher speeds than the D1b 12nm product.  However it seems that as it continued the development of the 10nm product, Samsung has taken the very unusual step of changing the design of the D1b 12nm product, which has been in production for nearly a year, to improve yield.  This typically means that the production process is also changed, an expensive procedure, with equipment having been ordered in 4Q ’24 (unconfirmed) and production of the D1b memory with the new design scheduled for 2Q or 3Q this year.
This was not a light decision on Samsung’s part, likely based on the need to push ahead of SK Hynix and Micron, both of whom use D1b memory in their HBM product, while Samsung is still using D1a memory in its HBM.  If Samsung is able to meet it goal of producing the new design of D1b memory quickly, without yield issues, they will remain competitive until the D1b 10nm development is completed.  If they face problems with the new design and process, they could lose more ground to their competitors and the idea of a design change mid-stream will be viewed as a mistake.  It’s a big bet, but also indicates the urgency being placed on fixing Samsung’s memory issues and allowing them to capitalize on the strength of the memory business this year, an absolute necessity if they are to remain the leader in the memory space.