iPhone grabs 6% of world phone shipments
But Nokia and Samsung tower over Apple
Apple increased its share of the world phone market in Q4 2011, accounting for 8.3 per cent of mobile shipments, but it's still a small fry compared to the likes of Nokia and Samsung.
Look at 2011 as a whole. Some 1.55bn handsets shipped during the year, but only six per cent of them - 93m units - had the iPhone brand, market watcher Strategy Analytics said.
Nokia, for all its woes, took more than a quarter of the market - 26.9 per cent, to be precise - and Samsung accounted for a further 21.1 per cent.
These figures show that while headlines may focus on smartphones, these gadgets are still being massively outsold by lesser kit designed for voice and a handful of other functions.
Earlier this week, it was revealed that Nokia has sold more than 1.5bn Series 40 handsets, for example.
Of course, smartphones remain far more lucrative than ordinary phones. Hence Apple's financial success and Nokia's monetary woes.
Apple raised its game during 2011, almost doubling its 2010 mobile market share of 3.5 per cent.
Nokia slid from a 2010 share of 33.3 per cent; Samsung was up a little: this time last year, SA said its 2010 share was 20.6 per cent.
Some 1.36bn phones shipped in 2010, making for year-on-year growth of 14.1 per cent.
COMMENTS
and?
The point is not what they cost, unless you just want the money, but how widespread they are. After all, the basic point of a mobile telephone is to ring someone or be rung by someone. So a large number of people have now got some sort of telephone, often living in circumstances under which they had no telephone or paid a lot to share one in some form before.
What is the use of the smartest telephone, at the highest price (or lowest), if there is hardly anyone else with whom to communicate using video calling or some special messaging system or even your latest, very high quality and fast, comms. infrastructure/protocol?
Anyway, I find the sheer numbers quite astounding, just thinking about the ability to manufacture and distribute those numbers of complex, electrical devices, nearly all of which are extraordinarily robust and fault-free under the most extraordinary range of conditions. This and the communications infrastructure supporting them must be one of the great technical achievements affecting and available to the whole world.
RTFAs
8.3% is for Q4 2011
6% is for the year.
The other article says that apple sold 19% of 488.5m smartphones in 2011, which I work out to be about 93 million iPhones sold. When factored in with 1.55 billion total phones, this equates to 6% being iPhones.
No idea where the 713.9m figure came from though. Maybe it's the total number of iPhones sold since launch?
What if they measured revenue?
Nokia is pretty much only selling low-margin candybar phones these days with no follow up market (app store, ad revenue,...).
This market is very prone to erosion by anyone that can be bothered to make cheap phones. Even previously bottom-end companies like Huawei seem to be bailing out and are happy for Nokia to be king of this puddle.
Nokia was once so good, but is now just a burned out wino. Pity
why choose?
I'd rather have Apple's margins and Nokia's shipments. Then I'd be making real dosh :-)
Apple's profits or Nokia's profits. Which would you rather have..?
