Analysts Jeff Pu and Henry Huang of GF Securities forecast in a research note published this week that Apple stands to be the sole handset maker among its peers to post shipment growth in 2026, at a point when the broader global market is anticipated to contract by upwards of 14%.

Data from IDC and Counterpoint Research, gathered across recent weeks, has been tracking how climbing memory prices are weighing on handset demand. Data from Apple point in different directions depending on the source, yet the company's performance through the downturn has held up noticeably relative to others in the industry.

The investor note from Pu and Huang points to Apple expanding its share of the handset market through 2026, even as most of its main rivals are forecast to ship fewer devices. Forecasts contained in the report put Apple on a path toward finishing 2026 as the sole handset maker among its peers to post shipment growth, with volumes expected to reach 257 million units — a rise of roughly 4% against the prior year's figures.

Forecasts place Samsung's shipment volume at roughly 241 million handsets, a figure little changed from the prior year, leaving Apple positioned above it in the rankings. For both 2024 and 2025, the top position in those rankings belonged to Apple.

Forecasters place Apple's slice of worldwide smartphone shipments at roughly 24% by 2026, up from 20% the previous year and 19% the year before that.

Across the broader market, the forecast calls for total handset volumes to contract to roughly 1.08 billion units in 2026 — a decline of 14.2% — with the two-year window spanning 2026 and 2027 described in the document as an especially testing stretch for the industry, one shaped largely by steep increases in memory costs that have already pushed device makers to trim output and lift retail prices. On the Apple front, the same analysis finds that the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max have drawn a measured consumer response, a pattern the researchers attribute in part to rivalry from the iPhone Duo alongside complaints about the handsets' weight.

Hinge-related manufacturing bottlenecks are also flagged by the analysts as a factor weighing on both product lines, with the iPhone Duo's EMS build target for 2026 trimmed from seven million units down to six million as a result. Production volumes for the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max have been trimmed to a combined 72 million units, a figure tied to engineering hurdles surrounding the variable-aperture camera system.

Orders for the iPhone Duo opened to the public a short while back, and delivery estimates have already slipped to late January for buyers in the United States, with wait times stretching out even further across a number of other countries.

A "Hold" designation on Apple shares carried over into the updated assessment, alongside a price objective set at $369. Apple's share price settled at $343.46 at the close of trading, a gain of 0.43% on the session, while every other major tech name ended the day in negative territory as a broader sector-wide pullback continued.