Apple iPhone beating Samsung for first time in years
Search trends related to Apple’s iPhone have exceeded Samsung for the first time in years, showing a superior marketing strategy and brand awareness.
Apple launched the first iPhone in June 2007, and it became an instant hit. It shipped around 1.4 million iPhones that year.
The iPhone’s popularity increased rapidly; by 2015, Apple had shipped 215 million devices. The smartphone was the driving force behind Apple becoming the world’s most valuable company.
South Africans did not get the device at launch. It was only in May 2008 that Vodafone signed a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to South Africa.
Google Trends data showed that interest in Apple’s iPhone increased rapidly in South Africa in 2008, which correlates to the device’s official launch in the country.
Google Trends provides access to a largely unfiltered sample of search requests made to Google. This data can be requested for a specific country.
It provides a window into what people are searching for and the trend of whether a company’s search activity is increasing or decreasing.
Interest in the iPhone continued to increase over the next fifteen years and reached an all-time high in September 2023 during the iPhone 15 launch.
It would be fair to assume that the launch of the iPhone 16 this year will result in a new high in iPhone search activity.
Samsung, in comparison, has had a strong presence in the smartphone market for two decades.
It started with the Samsung SPH-I300 in October 2001, while the first Android-powered Samsung Galaxy was launched in June of 2009.
Over the last fifteen years, Samsung and Apple have waged a fierce battle in the South African high-end smartphone market.
Vodacom and MTN said Apple and Samsung dominate their high-end smartphone sales, with superior sales to companies like Oppo and Huawei.
Apple and Samsung spend millions on marketing to ensure their smartphones remain desirable and aspirational.
It raises the question of which brand is achieving the most activity on Google search — an indication of the interest in these devices.
The latest Google Trends data shows that both companies have maintained interest in their smartphones. However, Apple has done a better job over the last five years.
In 2024, search activity for the iPhone has started to exceed that for Samsung, which has seldom happened before.
The chart below shows search activity for iPhone and Samsung devices over the last fifteen years.