Profits might be the most important indicator of success for Apple in the smartphone and tablet markets right now, but make no mistake, unit shipments still matter. After all, how can you “serve everyone” if not that many people are buying what you’re selling?

Of course, that’s not Apple’s case, despite Huawei reportedly retaining its second place in Q3 2018 global smartphone volume. A worldwide bronze medal is certainly not a bad result for a quarter that saw no iPhone XR sales and only a few days of iPhone XS and XS Max availability.

The latest Kantar Worldpanel data provides even better news for the industry's heavyweight champion of profits, as Apple somehow managed to make “strong gains” in the always relevant US smartphone market between July and September this year.

iOS is unsurprisingly still the nation’s second most popular mobile software platform, but its 39.7 percent share of Q3 sales increased by a solid 5 points year-on-year. That obviously means Android’s numbers declined, although Google and its many hardware-making partners have all the reasons to be proud of their results across the old continent.

Android is incredibly getting bigger and bigger in countries like Spain, Italy, and France, totally dominating EU5 sales during these three months, with an overall 82 percent share, up from “only” 79.7 a year ago.

Back to the US, the iPhone 8 was the quarter’s top-selling handset model, with a monumental 9.4 percent share, while Samsung’s Galaxy S9 ruled the charts of the EU5 (big five European markets) in September.

Huawei and Xiaomi continued their rapid European growth, placing in the top five smartphone ranking with the P20 Lite and Redmi Note 5 respectively, while the Xiaomi Mi 8 dominated Chinese sales, followed by Apple’s iPhone X.

China, Australia, and Germany were the only other major markets besides the US where iOS sales share surged, with Android making progress everywhere but Australia, China, and the US.