Rivals routed by Apple, Google smartphone onslaught
Farewell, Symbian, RIM?
It's a two-horse race, no question. Apple and Google's grip on the world smartphone market tightened even further during Q2, with everyone else's combined share falling to 15 per cent from 34.3 per cent in the year-ago quarter.
The numbers come from IDC, a market watcher, and they chart RIM's decline - from an 11.5 per cent share to 4.8 per cent in a year - and Symbian's even steeper fall: down from 16.9 per cent to 4.4 per cent.
Microsoft's Windows Phone platform has undoubtedly increased Redmond's presence in the market, but by a tiny amount: a 2.3 per cent share became 3.5 per cent in the months between Q2 2011 and Q2 2012. But it's clearly gaining on RIM, so there's scope for optimism at Microsoft. Question is, is it actively winning share - or is RIM simply losing it?
Smartphone OS World market shares Q2 2012 and 2011
Data source: IDC
Microsoft, like Google, is merely an OS supplier - their shares are spread across multiple vendors. Not so Apple which, like RIM and Symbian, saw its market share fall year on year. Unlike those others, Apple nonetheless increased its unit shipments, and since it's shipping units and selling them that makes money, we'd say it's a lot more cheerful than RIM and Nokia, Symbian's owner, are.
Apple can also take heart from increasing its market share in the US, its home market, according to recent figures from Strategy Analytics. But IDC's data show the value of enabling low-cost product in other markets, particularly emerging ones. The rise of the budget Android smartphone is clearly playing dividends for Google.
Its hardware partners doubled the combined unit shipments year on year, from 50.8m to 104.8m. Apple's went from 20.4m to 26m. ®
COMMENTS
Re: here is why
No.... were I a sheep I would have purchased one of the various generations of Iphone. I chose a handset that suited me rather than the monoform that Iphone is.
Incidentally Windows was one of the reasons for my dropping Nokia, and I know I am only one of many who feel that way
LoLtastic
If we were to assume, for the sake of the excercise, that in 2011 Nokia = Symbian we see that they had 17% market share.
Now it is a year later and we are witnessing the results of Elops "burning platform" strategy where Windows was supposed to replace Symbian.
Let's be extremely generous and give ALL Windows phone sales to Nokia (instead of sharing them around the few manufacturers that produce Winphones) and we can see that Nokia now has 8% market share, or less than half of last year.
I wonder when Nokia shareholders are going to start demanding that Elop producing results instead of a steady stream of epic fails?
<- The platform, it is burning
Question the data
The market's shifting. Android's changed the market by allowing phones <£200 to be smart. People who in the past would have just bought a regular phone, now buy a smart phone. Whether they use it as such is open to debate.
Re: here is why
Why? With Android, you can pick whatever phone you like, from all the big companies.
Perfer a keyboard over a touchscreen, no problem.
Like small phones rather than large? no problem.
Want one thats waterproof? no problem...
The whole POINT of Android is you aren't a sheep. You can pick and choose your DEVICE... And if your requirements change in the future, no problem either, you just sell it and buy a different Android device, all your contacts, all your apps, all your content is there to go with you... No lock-in to a specific hardware supplier.
Re: LoLtastic
The market share of Symbian has been in freefall since the second half of 2010, long before 'burning platforms'. Many argue that the infamous memo hastened the fall of Symbian, and maybe that is true, but it was dying on it's arse long before the speech. The most likely cause was Android phones arriving in developed markets in large numbers and multiple price points.
