The US smartphone market is dominated by two big brands, Apple and Samsung, and when one of them flubs its lines, the other one stands to benefit in a substantial way. To wit, the latest quarterly data from Kantar Worldpanel, which breaks sales down on a country-by-country basis, shows Apple’s iOS rising to a 40.5 percent share of US smartphone sales. That’s up 7 percentage points, or more than a fifth, on the same quarter (ending in October) last year, and appears to be explained in large part by Samsung’s disastrous Galaxy Note 7 release and subsequent recall.

The instrumental influence of the Note 7’s demise is best illustrated by looking at what happened in markets where Samsung isn’t as prominent. iPhone sales in urban China, for…

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