Up until the middle of 2014, Samsung looked like it could easily command the biggest share of the smartphone market and, as such, take home a massive chunk of the revenues.
The company had correctly predicted that smartphone screens would become bigger and, as consumers got used to the idea of having a five-inch device, sales would skyrocket. For a while, Samsung sold the vast majority of big-screened phones on the market.
But Apple, which was still selling 4 inch phones, had different plans.
Details of what would become the larger iPhone 6 leaked in July of 2014 and everything went downhill from there for Samsung. Apple shipped 74 million iPhones in the holiday quarter of 2014, reinvigorating its sales and re-asserting itself as the biggest company in the world by market cap, generating $18 billion (£12 billion) profit in the process.
Samsung went the other way, with falling sales and profits which are only starting to recover one and a half years on.
These charts from Jackdaw Research show what happens when Apple moves into your market. Basically, Samsung's phone sales can be divided into two historic periods, "Pre-iPhone 6" and "Post-iPhone 6."
First, shipments ...
Now the revenues ...
