Galaxy S4 not hurting ‘resilient’ US iPhone sales

Listening to much of the tech press, you might get the impression Samsung’s new Galaxy S4 would further erode Apple’s share of the smartphone market. One Wall Street firm ended the week on a contrary note, telling investors iPhone sales in North America “remain resilient” and Samsung’s Galaxy S4 is only selling slightly better than its predecessor.

The analyst firm Detwiler Fenton expects Apple will sell a cool thirty million iPhones during the June quarter amid expectation the nine-month-old handset would lose market share to its South Korean rival…

Barron’s has a quote attributed to Gerber:

Our latest checks continue to indicate North American iPhone sales remain resilient, despite the high profile device launches from Samsung Electronics and HTC.

We believe [quarter-to-date] share at Verizon Wireless is only off a couple percentage points sequentially and that the iPhone 5 continues to garner a larger percentage of iPhone share.

The analyst also expects the iPhone’s share at AT&T and Sprint “has dropped slightly more than” Verizon due to the Galaxy S4.

Apparently, those greedy U.S. carriers had expected Apple to lose more market share in the June quarter, but were surprised learning that thus far Samsung’s S4 is up only 15 percent over G3 sales in North America.

He also predicts T-Mobile will sell around a million iPhones during the June period and tells investors North American carriers over-estimated the impact the Galaxy S4 would have on iPhone demand.

Due to the power of the Apple brand and the iPhone’s resilience to competition, Apple has been able to maintain most of its U.S. share, the report has it.

Which is a good thing knowing Apple won’t launch a successor to the iPhone 5 until fall.