After a period of decline, the global smartphone market grew 3% on a year-over-year basis in the third quarter of 2025, according to a new report from Omdia.

The Omdia smartphone report credits the rebound to strong replacement demand as well as several vendors preparing inventories across the channel ahead of a hectic fourth quarter.

Samsung led the market for the third consecutive quarter with a 19% market share, benefitting from sustained volume strength of its Galaxy A series as well as an upgraded 7th generation foldable portfolio.

Apple’s iPhone shipments also grew, moving up 4% — its best-ever performance for the reporting period. Early demand for the iPhone 17 series helped it secure 18% share.

Following Samsung and Apple in terms of global market share were Xiaomi at 14% market share, and TRANSSION and vivo with 9% share each.

“Competitive pressures in the current market are intense, and many vendors are experiencing significant strain on profitability,” said Runar Bjørhovde, Omdia senior analyst, in a prepared statement about the smartphone report.

“Rising bill-of-materials (BoM) costs, for example, are tightening the balance between competitive pricing versus margins. Semiconductors including storage and memory are under heavy pressure as smartphone vendors compete for production capacity amid the hypergrowth of datacenters and AI investments.”

The growth in smartphone shipments goes hand-in-hand with the growth in mobile data usage. A recent CTIA report said that last year 132 trillion megabytes (MB) of mobile data was consumed. Total growth was 32 trillion MB, which marked the biggest year-over-year increase ever and was the third consecutive year of approximately 35% growth.

The growth in the United States dominates the world. The report found that investments in the states account for 20% of worldwide investments, though the U.S. represents only 4.3% of the global population. The large investment is put in context with another fact from the mobile data report: There are 1.7 connections for every person in the country.