The smartphone market is dead. There are no more new features. The newest models are filled to the brim with surveillance. Good riddance.

See ya. Don’t let that door hit ya…. :) Technology is ongoing iteration without end, see what happens when you stop Kodak, Xerox, IBM, Intel, US Steel, Motorola of Schaumburg, Illinois.

I don't think he's far off though, albeit a bit exaggerated.

The difference between the S21 Ultra and S26 Ultra is pretty small, all things considered. Appearance wise almost identical. Battery size is still 5000 mAh. Cameras are marginally better (maybe even worse since they removed the 10x zoom camera).

Counter points though, privacy screen on S25 Ultra is a nice new feature. CPU/GPU performance has been improving, including efficiency for lower compute tasks.

There are few phones these days with 8000mah -> 10000mah.

Personally, I only buy a new phone if the battery life improves with a weight increas of a smaller factor.

So I'm looking forward to buying a 9-10ah phone in the coming months.

My current phone is 6000 mah.

The same article at Apple fanboys website somewhat says the opposite: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/07/13/apples-steady-iphone-pr...

Curious where is the reality

The reality is that you didn't really check whether the two articles are same. The one in the OP is citing Counterpoint Research. The one you linked to cites Omdia. They seem to be two different market research reports.

I don’t think it says the opposite.

Apple claimed a record 20% of the market. Samsung overtook them with a 24% market share. These aren’t contradictory statements.

I suspect Apple’s percent of the profit share remains undefeated though.

The macrumors article links to Omdia report which says Samsung market share is 22% and it retained the top spot while Apple market share is 20%.

That 24% market share for Samsung is from the andoidauthority article, which cites counterpoint research.

Apple never cared about having the most marketshare outright. It focuses on gaining marketshare on customers with the higher likelihood to give them a profit.

Not entirely true anymore because Apple also targets the bottom of the mid end. Watch SE, Neo, iPad, iPhone SE.

These are all capable devices but they have enough missing capabilities to make them sound like giant on-ramps to me. Gateway devices for people before their next upgrade.

There's a reason why the marketing strategy for smart watches pivoted so heavily to older clientele and became health-centric (Older user = deeper wallet).

They aren't targeted at the Western consumers - they are targeted at the India and ASEAN markets where they act as a gateway for customers who would previously have purchased used Apple products from resellers like Aptronix (India) or FPT Shop (Vietnam) instead of directly from Apple.

They all have one thing in common: better profit margin to their competition, better hardware/Better software/Better integration to Apple ecosystems in comparison to their, well, peers/Competition, with better performance to their competition.

Profit share, why would Apple want to duplicate Google, Android, Windows Microsoft or all those Wintel/Android OEMs?

I’m inclined to believe the Macrumors story because Apple did have a great cycle with the 17 and high memory prices affect brands with less pricing power more.

Apple dont compete on units sold, they're all about the margin. Samsung sell a lot of low value phones, which in the current environment will do well, but you'd need to sell 10 of those to match the profit on one iPhone.

This sounds plausible, but don't Samsung also sell tens of millions of units of their flagship galaxy range phones, in addition to their budget offering?

Perhaps the margin isn't quite as large as for Apple phones but the flagships are still not cheap by any means.

Source: https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/global-smartpho...

Historical data: https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/global-smartpho...

In general, it seems that Samsung beats Apple every single quarter other than Q4, which is when Apple releases their new phone.

The only notable data point is that Apple beat Samsung in Q1 2026. Otherwise, Samsung shipping more than Apple is completely expected.