There have been questions about whether modest iPhone sales would hurt Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) revenue and stock value. Its market cap recently topped $3 trillion, so some questions have been put to rest. New research shows that the iPhone 15 is doing unusually well worldwide.

Research firm TrendForce released its analysis of global smartphone production for the third quarter of this year. Production is different from sales. Presumably, however, virtually all the phones that major manufacturers produce are sold quickly.

The bottom line of the TrendForce data was that “Global smartphone production in the third quarter reached approximately 308 million units, marking a 13% QoQ increase.” QoQ means quarter over the previous quarter. The firm also noted that holiday sales would likely hold the rising trend in the final quarter of the year.

The Competition

Apple only has one major competitor worldwide. Samsung’s production rose 11.5% to 60.1 million units. That gave it a global market share of 19.5%. Apple’s unit production rose 17.9% to 45.9 million. Its market share was 16.9%. Notably, Samsung has a much broader range of products than Apple, which helps its unit sales.

Most of the other smartphone competitors are companies based in China that have high sales there and do only modest business outside the country. Xiaomi produced 42.8 million phones, while Oppo produced 38.7 million and Vivo produced 24.5 million. (These 29 iconic brands completely collapsed and we forgot.)

The success of Chinese companies does pose a risk to Apple. China is the largest smartphone market in the world, but it is obviously a crowded one. Early iPhone 15 data from China showed business was fairly slow.

The research shows that the iPhone 15 has done well worldwide. Apple has more confirmation that it has another major success and support for that $3 trillion valuation.

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