Apple's latest flagship smartphones, the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, helped the company beat rivals such as Samsung and LG in terms of sales in the United States in the recently concluded fourth quarter of 2014.
A survey conducted by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners revealed that 50 percent of all the mobile phone sold in the previous quarter were Apple phones. Samsung only garnered 26 percent of sales and LG only garnered 11 percent. No other mobile phone company reached the 5 percent mark of the total sales.
The survey that CIRP conducted gathered responses from 500 people in the United States who have either activated a new phone or have re-activated a used phone in the period covered by the months of October and December last year. The CIRP conducted the survey from the final week of December to the first week of this month.
The data that CIRP was able to gather revealed the difficulty that other mobile phone manufacturers face when in competition with Apple and Samsung in the United States, as the two companies accounted [pdf] for 76 percent of all sales in the previous quarter. The trend of Apple and Samsung capturing most of the profits in the mobile phone industry in the United States has been going on for years, with all the rest of the mobile phone companies, including LG, Motorola and BlackBerry, making up only a small portion of the sales.
The overwhelming success of Apple in the fourth quarter of last year was due to the release of the new iPhones back in September. The popularity of the devices propelled Apple into gaining half of the fourth-quarter sales, a feat made more significant by the fact that the iPhone 6 Plus only became readily available in December.
According to CIRP, the demand for the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus continue to be strong.
Apple's share of new sales in the market only increased slightly compared to the fourth quarter of the previous year, which was at 48 percent. LG was also able to slightly increase its share, which was 8 percent in the year-ago period. However, Samsung suffered a significant decrease, dropping from 31 percent.
Samsung is struggling with its sales, and not just in the United States. For 2014, sales of mobile phones for the company plummeted, as the company pointed to increasing competition from China in the form of low-cost smartphone manufacturers Xiaomi and Huawei.
The survey by CIRP also revealed the loyalty of Apple users, as 86 percent of respondents that purchased a new iPhone were already owners of Apple's smartphone. In addition, 25 percent of respondents that previously had a Samsung phone switched to Apple's iPhone.
