It’s official: the iPhone Pro Max is the world’s most popular smartphone
If you’re a fan of iPhones with huge 6.7-inch screens, you’re certainly not alone. Some new statistics for 2023 show that Apple iPhone Pro models top the list of annual shipments worldwide for the first time.
According to market analysts Canalysthe iPhone 14 Pro Max was the best-selling smartphone in the world in 2023, closely followed by the iPhone 15 Pro Max. As the company puts it, this reflects “the premium shift in the market” and also the continued dominance of the iPhone, which took seven of the top 10 positions.
But what’s especially interesting is that in a year where an iPhone Pro model topped the charts worldwide for the first time, it was Apple’s two most recent Pro Max models that took the top spot, not the smaller one, 6 .1-inch Pro models. Looking at the growing gap between the Pro and Pro Max lines in terms of features, that’s clearly an intentional tactic on Apple’s part.
As you can see in our iPhone 15 Pro vs. iPhone 15 Pro Max comparison, Apple’s most expensive model is no longer just a supersized version of the standard Pro. With the Pro Max you get exclusive features like a 5x optical zoom, superior battery life, a larger screen and more. The base iPhone 15 Pro Max also has 256GB of storage, down from 128GB on the standard Pro.
The top 10 smartphone models shipped worldwide in 2023 consisted of 7 Apple and 3 Samsung models. It was the first year in which an iPhone Pro model topped the annual rankings of most smartphone models sold, reflecting the premium shift in the market. pic.twitter.com/EWtUL7KHpXFebruary 6, 2024
Still, the standard iPhone 13, 14 and 15 aren’t far behind Apple’s flagship models in terms of deliveries, and there are three Android phones in the list too.
These include the Samsung A14 4G and, even more surprisingly, the Samsung Galaxy A54 5G, a more expensive model and bucking the trend of cheaper Samsung phones dominating the annual Android shipments list.
Rise of the ProMax
Last year we had some strong indications that the iPhone Pro Max series was becoming the most popular smartphone in the world, with global analysts reporting Omdia showing that the iPhone 14 Pro Max topped deliveries in the first half of 2023. But this new data from Canalys confirms it: Apple’s biggest phone is also the most popular in the world.
There are probably a few reasons for this. First, we’re all upgrading our smartphones much less frequently, which has led to a two-year decline in global phone sales (according to one recent Counterpoint study). But as we upgrade, it seems we’re willing to go for bigger and more expensive phones.
If IDC And Canalys recently reported, this trend saw Apple beat Samsung in global smartphone shipments for the first time in 2023. As IDC’s Worldwide Tracker team research director Nabila Popal explained, Apple’s success is largely due to “the increasing trend of premium devices, which now represent more than 20 devices.” % of the market” and this was “fueled by aggressive trade-in offers and interest-free financing plans.”
The slow but steady rise of the iPhone 15 Pro Max led us to call it the most underrated phone of the year in 2023, for the simple reason that it wasn’t widely known how popular it had become. Well, this new data changes that and marks a big change in the popularity of smartphones.
But will the trend continue this year? The latest rumors suggest that this year’s iPhone 16 Pro could adopt some of the key features of the Max, such as the periscope zoom lens. Some of the most intriguing new features are also likely to be iOS 18’s rumored AI upgrades, which will likely be widely available across the iPhone 16 range. It will be interesting to see if the Max’s popularity in 2023 is just a blip or a long-term trend for larger phones once called ‘phablets’.