The world's top-selling 5G phone unveiled — sorry Android

The world's height-selling 5G phone unveiled — sorry Android

(Image credit: Tom'south Guide)

The iPhone 12 is the world's best selling 5G phone. And it managed that feat just two weeks after launch.

A study penned by Counterpoint Research's Varun Mishra showed just how well the iPhone 12 sold this October along with other popular 5G phones. The individual figures are agreeable fodder for your telephone brand fandom arguments, while the total moving-picture show tells us some interesting things about the future of phones.

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Apple really occupies the starting time two spots on Counterpoint's list. At the acme is the bones iPhone 12, which comprised 16% of all 5G phones sold globally in October, and 1 identify beneath it is the iPhone 12 Pro, which comprised eight%.

Over again, no surprise that new iPhones sold well, but the fact they topped the charts after merely two weeks on sale is still impressive. Even more than so, the iPhone 12 managed to enter the peak 10 5G phones sold since January 2020 at the number 7 spot despite being released later on in the yr.

iPhone 12 sales October 2020 — (Image credit: Counterpoint Research)

The rest of the list features some more familiar names. Third identify goes to the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, another flagship 5G phone released halfway through 2020 that had been at the pinnacle of the list before the iPhone 12 launched. Among the rest, we have a handful of Huawei phones, including the P40 Pro, a pair of Oppo phones, and also the bones Samsung Galaxy Annotation 20 and the Milky way S20 Plus.

Counterpoint offered a few dissimilar reasons to explain why these results came to be. Information technology suggested that iPhone users were particularly eager to upgrade to a 5G handset, and that attractive offers from U.S. mobile carriers helped convince them to do so. The fact that Apple is immensely popular around the world, instead of just a few countries (like Huawei in People's republic of china for instance) means it was able to benefit from large Chinese and Japanese sales equally well equally those in the U.S.

Such iPhone 12 sales success could have a huge impact on mmWave 5G specifically, which y'all might telephone call "truthful" 5G rather than the simpler sub-6GHz 5G near networks currently employ. Because the iPhone 12 is already uniform with mmWave 5G, Counterpoint suggested that this could help drive mobile carriers in the U.South. to develop their mmWave capabilities. In plow, that could pb to faster, more reliable 5G services that could help drive information-hungry applications like augmented reality and virtual reality.

Counterpoint predicted that the iPhone 12's stiff performance will continue to the end of the year and beyond, benefiting from vacation sales and the telephone's later than normal launch significant the usual iPhone upgrade bicycle is yet ongoing. Combine that with the fact that the whole iPhone 12 range is splendid, and Apple tree's latest flagship is jump to cause trouble for the best of the Android phones earth for another year at least.

We'll have to see if the Samsung Galaxy S21 can take on its Apple rival, when it arrives in January.

Richard is a Tom'southward Guide staff writer based in London, covering news, reviews and how-tos for phones, gaming, sound and whatever else people need advice on. Following on from his MA in Magazine Journalism at the University of Sheffield, he'southward also written for WIRED U.1000., The Register and Creative Bloq. When not at work, he's likely thinking nearly how to brew the perfect cup of specialty coffee.