RESEARCH
Global Smartphone Shipments Rose in 2025 -- Trackers Split Between 1.9% and 2.5% Growth
Four independent market-research firms published full-year 2025 global smartphone shipment figures within weeks of each other, and while all four agree the market grew and cleared roughly 1.25 billion units, they do not agree on whether growth cleared the widely-cited 2% threshold. IDC puts 2025 growth at 1.9% on 1.26 billion units shipped; Omdia and Counterpoint Research both report exactly 2%; TrendForce, which tracks production rather than shipments, reports 2.5% on 1.254 billion units. The spread is narrow in absolute terms but wide enough that a headline claim -- 'smartphone shipments grew at least 2% in 2025' -- is true according to three trackers and false according to the fourth.
Findings
- IDC reports 2025 full-year global smartphone shipments of 1.26 billion units, 1.9% YoY growth -- just under the 2% mark cited elsewhere.
- Omdia and Counterpoint Research both independently report exactly 2% YoY growth for 2025, with Omdia citing 1.25 billion units as the highest annual shipment level since 2021.
- TrendForce reports 2.5% YoY growth to 1.254 billion units, but its figure measures smartphone production, not shipments -- a methodological difference from the other three trackers that partly explains why it sits above the pack.
- All four trackers converge within a roughly 1.25-1.26 billion unit band (a sub-1% spread on absolute volume) even as their growth-rate framing diverges enough to flip a 2%-threshold claim from true to false depending on which tracker is cited.
Delta Engine result
↔ Divergence Detected — Δ 0.0879 (threshold 0.05)
- Omdia T0 95
- Counterpoint Research T0 95
- IDC T0 88
- TrendForce T0 87
Evidence quality
avg 25 · min 25 · max 25 · spread 0