Apple beats Samsung for the first time by selling more phones.

Tech giant Apple has beaten South Korean smartphone company Samsung for the first time since 2016. According to Gartner in its latest report, iPhone 12 helps Apple sell more phones than Samsung and become the world's top smartphone brand in the last quarter of 2020.

"Apple surpassed Samsung to retake the No. 1 global smartphone vendor spot. Last time Apple was the top smartphone vendor in the fourth quarter of 2016," says the report. According to Gartner, Apple sold nearly 18 million more smartphones in the last quarter of 2020 than the previous flagbearer Samsung.

Samsung faced stiff competition from regional smartphone companies such as Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo in the markets. In 2020, Apple and Xiaomi were the only two among these top five vendors to grow year-over-year.

"The sales of more 5G smartphones and lower-to-mid-tier smartphones minimized the market decline in the fourth quarter of 2020," says Anshul Gupta, senior research director at the firm Gartner. Apple also testified a 14.9% year-over-year gain, even with Samsung's sales declining 11.8%. Among these five brands, Xiaomi was the fastest-growing company in sales, with a growth rate of 33.9%.

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