Top selling mobile phones from last 5 years – iPhone 13 topped sales for 2022

2023 has already been a busy year for mobile phone launches, and with the iPhone 15 on the way, there’s still plenty more to look forward to. But which mobile phones have been the most popular over the last 5 years?

The top-selling mobile phone of the last 5 years: 

• Apple has dominated the worldwide handset-sales leaderboards over the last five years, producing eight of the ten best-selling phones of 2022. The best-selling phone in the world in 2022 was the Apple iPhone 13, which on its own made up for a massive 5% of global mobile phone sales. The Samsung Galaxy A13 was Samsung’s only entry into the top 5 for 2022, securing 1.5% of global sales. 

• The best-selling phone of 2021 was the Apple iPhone 12 which accounted for 2.9% of global mobile phone sales. Apple also produced seven of the ten top-selling phones in 2021. 

• The Apple iPhone 12 was also the best-selling phone of 2020, accounting for a staggering 16% of all mobile phones sold worldwide. The Apple iPhone 12 Pro accounts for a further 8% of global sales. This means that Apple, with only two models, made up almost a quarter of all mobile phone sales across 2020 (24%). 

• The best-selling mobile phone in 2019 was the Apple iphone XR, which made up 3% of global mobile phone sales. 2019 was also Samsung’s most successful year in the leaderboards when the company secured two models in the top 5 list, the Samsung Galaxy A50 and Samsung Galaxy A10 models, each of which accounted for 1.8% and 1.7% of global sales respectively.

• The Apple iPhone 8 and the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus, which both accounted for 2.4% of global mobile phone sales, were the top two best-selling smartphones of 2018. The Apple iPhone X followed closely behind, accounting for 2.3% of purchases.