New research by analytics company Strategy Analytics shows that the Samsung Galaxy A51 has emerged as the world’s best-selling smartphone in the first quarter of 2020. The 4G variant of the smartphone, not the 5G variant, accounted for 2.3% share of all smartphones shipped during the period. It was popular in all regions, particularly in Europe and Asia.
According to the report, global smartphone shipments reached 275 million units in Q1 2020. Android smartphones account for 86% of that total. Both Samsung and Xiaomi dominate the top-six best selling smartphone models for the same period.
The second most popular Android smartphone was the Xiaomi Redmi 8, which took 1.9% of the market share and this was followed by Samsung’s Galaxy S20+ which took 1.7% share. The latter was the only premium model among the top-six in Strategy Analytics’ research.
The report noted that Android is entering a post-premium era. The trend towards lower-priced Android handsets is growing this year as the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has caused consumers to be more price-sensitive. When shopping for new smartphones, many are looking out for models that deliver the biggest bang for their buck.
To recap, the Galaxy A51 was introduced in January 2020 in a variety of cool “Prism” colours: Prism Crush Blue, Prism Crush Black, and Prism Crush White. It carried a retail price of RM1,299 and boasted a 6.5” Full HD+ Super AMOLED Infinity-O display, which has a single-hole punch cutout where a 32MP selfie camera resides.
You get a quad-camera array on the back consisting of a 48MP main camera, 12MP ultra-wde camera, a 5MP macro lens and a 5MP depth sensor. Internally, it comes powered by Samsung’s Exynos 9611 chipset that is complemented by 6GB of RAM.
Apart from that you get a 4,000mAh battery that supports 15W fast charging. It has a USB-C port for charging and data transfer.
Samsung later launched an upgraded variant of the A51 that came with 8GB of RAM on 8 May 2020 that was priced at RM1,399.