• Apple Computer, Inc. (Apple), the brand responsible for the rise of the smartphone with the iPhone, is one of the most influential and recognisable brands in the world. It is also the most valuable technology company in the world, being valued at over $2.5 trillion in 2023.

• The introduction of the iPhone, marked the beginning of Apple’s journey to ascend to be one of the most valuable companies in the world. It’s revenue increased from $37.4 billion in 2008 to $65 billion in 2010.

• Additionally, it has expanded its subscription services to include cloud storage, video games, fitness, and music and video streaming. In 2020, this segment alone brought in $53 billion, making it Apple’s second-largest segment.

• Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. (Samsung) being world’s second-largest technology company, with a market valuation of over $0.35 trillion, is Apple’s biggest competitor.

• In order to understand the dominance of Apple in today’s world we need to analyse its growth in revenue and user-base for the last 15 years and compare it with its biggest competitor i.e. Samsung.

• Data visualization is one of the many ways that this data may be analysed. Data visualization can be defined as an analytic process that is concerned with the presentation of data in the form of tables and charts, as opposed to figures (Martinez, Martinez, & Solka, 2010). It refers to the graphical representation of data or information to help understand patterns, trends, and relationships within the data.

The primary objectives of this study are as follows:

• Revenue Comparison: The aim of this study is to apply the various techniques under data visualization, and combine this knowledge with the available data to analyze the revenue trends of Apple and Samsung from 2005 to 2022 and identify their growth trajectories and how there compare to each other. This analysis will provide insights into the financial performance and market positions of both companies.

• Regional Revenue Comparison: By comparing Apple’s revenue across different regions, we can assess the relative contributions of each region to the company’s overall revenue. This analysis will provide insights into regional market dynamics, customer preferences, and the effectiveness of Apple’s marketing and distribution strategies in different parts of the world.

• Product Sales Analysis: By examining the sales figures of different product categories, such as smartphones, tablets, wearables, and services, we aim to compare Apple’s product performance. This analysis will shed light on the popularity of specific products and the companies’ strategies in different market segments.

• User History Assessment: Evaluating the user base and its growth over time will help us understand the adoption, retention, satisfaction and loyalty of Apple customers.

• The data on Apple’s revenue, sales and user base was retrieved from Apple Statistics (2023).

• The data on Samsung’s revenue was retrieved from Samsung Electronics: global revenue 2005-2022.

• The data is generally composed of three variable groups; Year, Company, Product Type, Revenue , Sales and Subscribers/Users spread across 4 sheets.

• The observations are captured for the time period of 2006 to 2022, depending on the origin of the product/service.

• The data preparation steps involved both data cleaning and data mutation. Data cleaning refers to a data preparation process that removes observations of attributes that have aspects that are either not needed in the analysis or have the potential to result in misleading findings (Arif & Mujtaba, 2015). Data mutation, on the other hand, is a data preparation method that creates new variables from the existing variables (Shaffer, 2011).

• The data cleaning was performed by removing redundant observations which had null entries for the revenue, user or product sales variables.

• The data mutation involved the creation of the text variable in the third dataframe containing information on the product type, year, revenue and product sales for each of the observations. The new text variable was specifically created for the interactive plot.

• This comparative analysis of Apple and Samsung’s revenue, Apple’s product sales and user history provides valuable insights into their market performance and competitive landscape. By examining revenue trends, product sales figures, and user base dynamics, we can observe the growth trajectory of Apple against its biggest competitor i.e. Samsung.

• The iPhone saw Apple ascend to one of the most valuable companies in the world. We can clearly observe that Apple took over Samsung in total revenue generated in 2015, with very strong growth trajectory. In recent times, Apples total revenue far exceeds that of Samsung.

• From this study we also observe that Americas contribute to a significant chunk of Apple’s total revenue, approximately 43% of the total revenue generated by Apple in different regions of the world.

• The study also showed the revenue generated by different Apple product categories over the years. We observe that iPhone sales generate the majority of revenue for Apple (over 50% to be specific). We further infer the significant rise in iPhone sales as compared to other products.

• From the comparison study of the Active Subscribers / Users of Apple Services over the years, we observe that the user count of iOS Apps has seen the most significant and steady growth over the years, followed by Apple Pay and Siri.

• Arif, M., & Mujtaba, G. (2015). A survey: data warehouse architecture. International journal of hybrid information technology, 8(5), 349-356.

• Kirk, A. (2016). Data Visualization: A Handbook for Data Driven Design (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Ltd.

• Martinez, W. L., Martinez, A. R., & Solka, J. (2010). Exploratory Data Analysis With MATLAB, 2nd Edition (1 ed.). London: CRC/Chapmann & Hall.

• Shaffer, C. A. (2011). Data Structures and Algorithms Analysis.

• Apple Statistics (2023): DAVID CURRY (May 2, 2023). Retrieved from: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/apple-statistics/

• Samsung Electronics: global revenue 2005-2022: Federica Laricchia (Jun 2, 2023). Retrived from: https://www.statista.com/statistics/236607/global-revenue-of-samsung-electronics-since-2005/