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The iPhone 17 Pro Max and Galaxy S25 Ultra were surely among the world's top produced phones in 2025. | Image by PhoneArena
Unlike last year, when it was unclear for a little while what company won the global smartphone sales war of 2024, things look far more obvious at the beginning of 2026 in terms of 2025's dominant handset vendor.
Samsung made just as many mobile devices as Apple in 2025
Incredibly enough, we're apparently talking about an identical number of 239.8 million units for the world's top two smartphone manufacturers, and in terms of year-on-year progress, Samsung actually edged out its arch-rival with a production boost of 11 percent (compared to 9 percent growth for the Cupertino-based tech giant).
The iPhone 17 was undoubtedly one of the big contributors to Apple's dominant Q4 2025 production numbers. | Image by PhoneArena
Of course, that kind of makes Samsung's loss in the global shipment competition last year even more painful, as the mobile industry's former top dog clearly expected to win another such title on the back of the Galaxy S25 lineup and mid-rangers like the Galaxy A56 and Galaxy A17.
Samsung's overly ambitious goals likely became obvious for the company as the year progressed, with its production declining by 7 percent quarter-on-quarter and only reaching 58.2 million units during the final three months of 2025.
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In the same timeframe, Apple impressively raised its global smartphone production by no less than 54 percent from Q3 to hit a whopping 87 million units and crucially contribute to the industry's overall 2.7 percent quarter-on-quarter increase and 2.5 percent year-on-year growth for 2025 as a whole.
Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo are the other top five players
Those three names and their positions in last year's global smartphone production hierarchy are definitely not surprising, largely lining up with the sales reports from the past couple of months, but it is interesting to note how far behind Oppo is Vivo ranked in this particular chart.
That probably has something to do with the fact that Oppo's numbers also include major sub-brands like OnePlus and Realme, while Vivo only covers IQOO... in addition to Vivo.
That's a huge gap between the two leading brands and the rest of the top eight group. | Image by TrendForce
Despite holding a minimal advantage over Oppo in third place in Q4 2025 production, Xiaomi has a much larger lead for the entire year, which puts it in an excellent position to retain its bronze medal spot in 2026.
Another interesting detail to highlight is that Honor is the only other top eight smartphone manufacturer besides Apple that managed to boost its production in the last three months of last year compared to the previous three months, although that wasn't enough to take the sixth place away from Transsion.
In eighth place, we have Lenovo, which might sound surprising... if you've been living under a rock for the past decade and don't know the China-based giant owns Motorola.
What's on the horizon?
There's no easy way to put this for any (major or minor) player involved in the mobile industry. Sales will be down in 2026 (as so many reports have suggested over the last few months), and the same will obviously go for smartphone production as well.
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TrendForce analysts expect a decline of "at least" 10 percent from around 1.25 billion smartphones manufactured worldwide in 2025 to roughly 1.1 billion units this year, and the main cause is no secret - the industry-wide surging memory prices that are already forcing brands like Samsung to make their handsets costlier and not (much) better.
With Apple tipped to be impacted by this rise in component prices to a smaller extent than everyone else, it feels safe to predict that iPhones will trump their Galaxy rivals in production numbers this time next year. But miracles do occasionally happen, so why wouldn't Samsung dream of pulling off one at the end of 2026, especially now that the Galaxy S26 Ultra looks like a massive hit?
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Adrian, a mobile technology enthusiast since the Nokia 3310 era, has been a dynamic presence in the tech journalism field, contributing to Android Authority, Digital Trends, and Pocketnow before joining PhoneArena in 2018. His expertise spans across various platforms, with a particular fondness for the diversity of the Android ecosystem. Despite the challenges of balancing full-time parenthood with his work, Adrian's passion for tech trends, running, and movies keeps him energized. His commitment to mid-range smartphones has led to an eclectic collection of devices, saved from personal bankruptcy by his preference for 'adequate' over 'overpriced'.
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