Samsung's mobile business in 2024 is doing pretty well in key markets, including Europe. Market watchers have previously revealed that Samsung was Europe's most popular smartphone brand in Q1 2024, but that's only half the story.
Market data from Canalys shows that Samsung's new Galaxy S24 series, particularly the base and Ultra models, have recorded considerably higher shipments in Europe throughout Q1 2024 than the S23 models did a year before.
In the first three months of 2024, the Galaxy S24 Ultra topped a whopping 1.6 million shipments across Europe (excluding Russia). The base model also recorded 1.1 million shipments.
In contrast, last year, the Galaxy S23 and S23 Ultra reached 0.8 and 0.9 million shipments, respectively. This shows that Samsung's 2024 premium phones are more popular across the Old Continent than their predecessors.
Interestingly enough, Galaxy A3x and A5x phones this year no longer climbed into the top 10, but the Galaxy A15 was an incredibly successful phone in Europe. Surprisingly so.
Galaxy A15 beats iPhones and Samsung flagships
According to this data from Canalys, the phone that recorded the highest shipments in Europe in Q1 2024 was the iPhone 15 Pro Max. But that's only a matter of perspective.
In its ranking, Canalys splits the Galaxy A15 LTE and the Galaxy A15 5G into different columns. However, if we combine the shipments of both LTE and 5G variants, they total 2.8 million and beat the iPhone 15 Pro Max by about 0.2 million shipments.
In other words, disregarding connectivity capabilities, the Galaxy A15 was the most-shipped Samsung phone in Europe in Q1 2024, followed by the iPhone 15 Pro Max, the iPhone 15 Pro, and the Galaxy S24 Ultra.
The Galaxy A25 5G also barely made it on the list with 0.9 million shipments throughout the first quarter of the year.
As for the rest of 2024, market watchers say that AI capabilities will play a huge role moving forward, particularly for the premium segment.
That sounds like great news for Samsung, seeing how its Galaxy AI suite seemingly leads the market thanks to clever features such as Circle to Search, Summarize, Generative Edit, and others.
Apple is also expected to hop on the Generative AI bandwagon later this year, though its solution might have even more stringent hardware requirements than Samsung's.