New figures released by the IT research firm Gartner suggest that global iPhone sales have seen impressive year-on-year growth of 36%. This has helped Apple’s share of the international smartphone market to rise by 2.4 percentage points year-on-year in 2015’s second quarter.
Gartner commented that, despite lethargic growth in the market as a whole, Apple remained the undisputed leader in the premium segment. It was observed that the iPhone maker’s impressive and improving performance here “continued to negatively impact its rivals’ premium phone sales and profit margins.”
Garter added that iPhone shipments were healthy even in emerging markets, and particularly noted that the company had upped its smartphone revenue in China by 68%, bucking the trend of the overall revenue from handsets in the East Asian country decreasing by 4%.
Apple certainly seems to be taking the challenge to Android smartphones in China, judging from comments made by research director Anshul Gupta and quoted by TechCrunch. Describing Apple as a “big brand”, he pointed out that “it’s kind of an aspirational brand so many of the consumers in China expect to own an iPhone at some point in time”. He also referred to Android handset owners resisting buying replacement Android devices, actuated by ambitions to purchase iPhones instead.