Tired of Apple & Samsung? Meet the new contenders in smartphone tech

Peter Griffin’s consumer tech columns appear fortnightly on listener.co.nz

When it comes to smartphones, Apple and Samsung have dominated the New Zealand market for more than a decade, claiming the lion’s share of sales between them.

Apple had about 46% of the market in 2023, according to Statista, and Samsung took 35%. The rest of the market is made up of Android phone makers eking out single-digit slices of the pie.

It’s not an ideal situation for us as mobile phone users. We’ve never had access to Google’s highly-regarded Pixel line-up of smartphones and a third big player, like Google, could shake up the market.

Chinese phone maker Huawei was shaping up to be exactly that in 2020 when it claimed nearly 20% of the market. Its P20 and P30 Pro phones had exceptional camera quality and great battery life.

That stellar run was derailed when Huawei, by then one of the world’s largest providers of telecommunications infrastructure, was banned from featuring the full set of Google apps or the Play store on its phones because of a trade dispute between the US and China. That effectively killed Huawei’s phone business in western nations, as consumers were wary of relying on Huawei’s own AppGallery platform.

But it’s not entirely a two-horse race here and smartphone makers’ fortunes can change quickly. Oppo, a Chinese phone maker, is now New Zealand’s third-largest smartphone brand with around 5% of the market.

It made a name for itself with fast charging technology, and its high-end Find X phones showcased some slick design. Xiaomi has 1.7% market share and Lenovo, Nokia and Motorola each claim around 0.5%.

Apple unveils the iPhone 16 line-up next month with a heavy focus on Apple Intelligence, the AI-features that it debuted as part of the iOS software that powers the phones. Apple users will weigh up whether the new features justify an upgrade.