Biggest Phone Brands 1997–2026 | Chart Race: Who Sold the Most Phones?

NEW SERIES ON SCALAR: CHART RACES – the world in moving charts. 30 years, 29 brands, almost 33 billion phones. The ten biggest phone brands in the world, year by year – from Motorola and Nokia in 1997 to Samsung and Apple in 2026. Each bar is the brand's share of all phones sold worldwide that year. Top left: the #1 brand, its lead and how many years in a row it has been on top. Top right: the date, phones sold that year and the running total since 1997. Which of these brands was your first phone? Tell us in the comments! 👇 ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 1997 – Motorola leads 0:10 1998 – Nokia takes the crown 0:39 2000 – Nokia 3310 and 400 million phones 1:14 2002 – Sony Ericsson, Samsung climbs 1:48 2004 – Motorola RAZR 2:40 2007 – The first iPhone 2:58 2008 – Nokia at its peak 3:32 2010 – Smartphones take over 4:07 2012 – Samsung becomes #1 4:41 2014 – Nokia becomes Microsoft, Xiaomi arrives 4:59 2015 – Smartphones only from here 5:16 2016 – OPPO and vivo 6:08 2019 – Huawei passes Apple 6:43 2021 – Huawei collapses, Xiaomi is #3 7:17 2023 – Apple is #1 8:09 2026 – Samsung back on top 📊 DATA & SOURCES • 1997–2014: share of ALL mobile phones sold to end users (Dataquest / Gartner yearly figures). • 2015–2026: share of SMARTPHONES only (Gartner, Counterpoint, IDC) – analysts stopped publishing figures for all phones per brand. • 2026 covers January–June (IDC). • Analysts usually publish only the top five or six brands. Values marked "EST." are our estimates based on company reports and other analyst data. • Figures are yearly: the bars move smoothly between one year's result and the next, the months only show the passing of time. • Sony Ericsson continues the Ericsson bar and Sony continues Sony Ericsson; Lenovo includes Motorola from 2014; Nokia was owned by Microsoft in 2014–2015. 🎵 MUSIC "Digital Lemonade" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... This channel is not affiliated with any of the brands shown. All names and logos are trademarks of their respective owners and are used for identification and commentary only. 🔔 Subscribe to Scalar for more comparisons that show the world in numbers.