Apple finally has the bestselling smartphone

For those of us who’ve had our iPhones crack seemingly just because we looked at them funny, the news was mind-boggling. When the door plug detached on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 on January 5, an iPhone that was sucked out of the plane and fell 16,000 feet was found under a bush in Portland, Oregon. Not only was its screen not cracked, but it had half a battery charge and was—call it irony, or defiance—still in airplane mode.

But the biggest iPhone news is not about it falling, but rather going up.

For the first time since Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone on stage in 2007, Apple has surpassed Samsung to grab the largest share of the smartphone market:

• Apple commanded a 20.1% share of the worldwide smartphone market in 2023, according to data from the International Data Corporation (IDC).
• Samsung, which had topped the market since 2010, slipped into second place, with a 19.4% share.

Soft landings: As Apple overtook Samsung, the overall global smartphone market shrank 3.2% YoY, to 1.17 billion units. But IDC predicted a recovery for the market in 2024, noting that in Q4 2023, shipments grew 8.5% YoY.

The iPhone user, Cuong Tran, whose iPhone was sucked out of the Alaska Airlines flight, meanwhile told the Los Angeles Times he was “dozing off” at the time. Also sucked out of the plane: one of his Nike shoes and a sock.

While there were no reports of the sneaker being recovered, it did give new meaning to “Nike Air,” the line of shoes whose inventor, Frank Rudy—hold onto your seats (which in case of emergency also are flotation devices)—was an aerospace engineer.