iPhone 7 was Telia Norway’s best-selling smartphone in October

Telia Norway said the new Apple iPhone 7 topped its list of best-selling smartphones in October, closely followed by the Apple iPhone 6s.

The operator noted that its smartphone top-10 remained broadly stable in October without any major changes from September, with the exception of the Sony Xperia E5 that entered in ninth place. The Samsung Galaxy A3 was another newcomer to the list.

Karl Fredrik Lund, head of Telia private, noted that Norwegians are true to Apple, and said its figures show that many iPhones are in circulation. However, the 4s -- a 3G phone -- remains the model that is currently mostly in use.

The operator would no doubt want to encourage people with older phones to upgrade to 4G models in order to transfer more of its traffic onto the 4G network.

Top 10 in October (previous position in brackets):
1. (2) Apple iPhone 7
2. (1) Apple iPhone 6s
3. (3) Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge
4. (5) Samsung Galaxy S7
5. (8) Apple iPhone 7 Plus
6. (4) Apple iPhone SE
7. (7) Apple iPhone 5S
8. (6) Apple iPhone 6S Plus
9. (n/a) Sony Xperia E5
10. (n/a) Samsung Galaxy A3

The list is ranked by sales volume and is based on data from 63 Telia shops, via its online store, through the call centre and also via resellers.

Recent figures show that the iPhone is struggling in other parts of the world, however: IDC said Apple’s share of the massive smartphone market in China slid by more than a third in the third quarter as home grown vendors dominated the segment.

The market research firm said iPhone shipments dropped to 8.2 million units in the third quarter of 2016, down from 12.4 million during the prior year, as Apple’s device claimed a mere 7.1 percent of the market.

Meanwhile, Chinese vendors Oppo and Vivo both doubled the number of phones shipped in the third quarter. Oppo was the top-selling vendor in the latest quarter, shipping 20.1 million units to claim 17.5 percent of the market, and Vivo shipped 19.2 million units to grab a 16.7 percent market share.

In its latest quarterly report, Apple showed a slight decline in total iPhone shipments when compared with its performance during the same quarter a year ago: 45.5 million iPhone sales versus 48 million last year.