Apple's smartphone chip share rises to 21% in a shrinking market

Counterpoint's Q3 ranking

Counterpoint Research's preliminary Q3 2026 tracker put MediaTek first with 28% of smartphone system-on-chip shipments, down from 34% a year earlier. Qualcomm fell to 22% from 25%, Apple rose to 21% from 17%, UNISOC slipped to 13% from 14%, and Samsung climbed to 8% from 6%. The group Counterpoint labels Others went from about 4% to 8%.

Total chip shipments fell 21% year on year, Counterpoint said. It did not disclose unit shipments and rounds shares to whole percentages. Applying that decline to the rounded shares implies Apple shipped about 2% fewer chips, Qualcomm about 30% fewer and MediaTek roughly 32% fewer, according to an indexed calculation by Memeburn. Samsung's implied volume rose about 5%, though rounding could change the sign of the small Apple and Samsung moves.

Share gain without unit growth

In a market shrinking by a fifth, a company that ships roughly the same number of units gains share without selling one more chip. Counterpoint said Apple and Samsung were relatively less affected by the contraction because of vertically integrated supply chains and premium-focused strategies. MediaTek and UNISOC, with more exposure to mid-range and entry-level phones, were hit harder as manufacturers cut low-margin models.

Many reports noted that Apple held off raising iPhone prices until September, when the iPhone 18 Pro series launched, while rivals raised prices more than once during the year, 9to5Mac reported. Those reports have also shown the iPhone outperforming the broader smartphone market, 9to5Mac said.

A separate Counterpoint device-market study, not the chip tracker, put Apple at 22% of smartphone shipments and Samsung at 23%, with total device shipments down 20% and the average wholesale selling price at $442, up 27%. Counterpoint attributed Apple's device decline primarily to the lack of a base iPhone 18 model; the regular iPhone 18 is reportedly expected in spring 2027.

Samsung's Exynos mix

Samsung used Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and its own Exynos 2600 in the Galaxy S26 series. The Exynos chip went in base and Plus units depending on region. Last year Snapdragon powered all Galaxy S25 models. The mid-range Galaxy A57 and A37 carry the Exynos 1680 and 1480.

Samsung's application processor share reached 9% in the second quarter of 2026, its highest since 2024, and stayed above year-earlier levels in the third quarter. Counterpoint tied part of Qualcomm's decline to that mix and part to weak sales at Chinese smartphone makers. A Galaxy handset using Snapdragon counts toward Qualcomm in the tracker; one using Exynos counts toward Samsung, without adding a phone sale.

Memory costs and the budget squeeze

Rising memory prices were one of three causes Counterpoint gave for the shrinking chip market, along with longer replacement cycles and cautious inventory management. Smartphone memory prices rose 5% to 10% quarter on quarter in the third quarter, and Counterpoint expects about 5% more in the fourth.

Cheap phones took the worst of it, which is why MediaTek and UNISOC lost more share than Apple or Samsung. Some budget makers have started using recycled memory to cut bills of materials, though Counterpoint says technical constraints keep adoption limited.

Counterpoint now expects global smartphone AP shipments to fall 20% in 2026. It had projected 14% in July. It expects a further 3% to 4% decline in 2027.

What happens next

Three flagship chip families on TSMC's 2nm process arrived in September 2026: Apple's A20 series, including the A20 Pro used in the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo, MediaTek's Dimensity 9600 Pro and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6. Samsung builds the Exynos 2600 on its own 2nm process. Flagship chips now cost an estimated $220 to $300 each, against an estimated $120 to $130 for 2022's Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, according to supply-chain estimates cited in the report.

Counterpoint analyst Shivani Parashar said the launches should lift premium smartphone chip shipments in the fourth quarter of 2026, but total volumes will likely fall short of the fourth quarter of 2025. Soumen Mandal, another Counterpoint analyst, said memory prices will keep rising, though volatility should ease next year, and the shift to 2nm will keep flagship chip prices high while shipments stay broadly stable.

On its fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 earnings call, Apple described the memory pricing situation as "unprecedented", a company characterization, and warned that further increases would pressure margins. It guided to a 45% to 46% gross margin for the December quarter, down from 48.2% a year earlier. The same memory cost pressure that shrank the chip market is expected to persist.