Samsung ships two smartphones for every one Apple sells
Galaxy giant dominates handset biz in Q3
We already knew smartphone shipments have never been higher, and now we know that, in Q3 at least, the beneficiary is Samsung.
According to ABI Research and Strategy Analytics, market watchers both, the Korean chaebol - a multi-industry colossus - took more than a third of the market. According to SA, Samsung’s share was 35.2 per cent, achieved by shipping 56.9 million smartphones.
As ABI noted, that’s more the twice the 26.9 million units Apple shipped during the same three-month period, enough iPhones to give the Cupertino firm 16.6 per cent of the market. Both figures come from SA.
Apple and Samsung both increased their market shares, indicating how the smartphone market is increasingly becoming a three-horse race: these two and the rest.
Apple’s shipments were up year on year 57.3 per cent, Samsung up 102.5 per cent. The others together saw shipments rise merely 4.1 per cent, conclusively demonstrating that the first two, and Samsung very much in particular, are Hoovering up all the new buyers.
Apple’s figures will have been depressed to an extent by punters waiting for the iPhone 5, which didn’t arrive until the very end of the quarter. It will be interesting to see what impact that has on Apple’s share in Q4. But it’s worth bearing in mind that the partisan nature of technology markets means that Samsung probably hasn’t gained many Apple customers tired of waiting for an upgrade. It will have grabbed buyers from other Android vendors and from Nokia, not necessarily from its arch-rival.
Speaking of the Finnish phone giant, it shipped 6.3 million smartphones for a four per cent market share. Giant no longer, it seems.
Overall smartphone shipments rose 34.8 per cent, from 120 million to 161.7 million units. ®
COMMENTS
Which one would you rather have?
Easy:
Shares - Apple
Phone - Samsung
Apple are still selling the 4, the 4S and the 5 (and then 3 different memory sizes for the 5).
Sure, Samsung have 'more' phones, but the Apple range above covers £319->£699 - so I'd definitely say they have a range of phones and there's a pretty large overlap in prices between Samsung and Apple Smart phones.
i.e. They're both fighting over the same section of the market (with Samsung also covering the cheaper end, Apple's ignoring for now).
Same old argument.
requires the same old answer.
So for AC7:52 - and indeed anyone else who is equally hard of thinking - here it is again:
It doesn't matter *how* many models you have, just about everybody only buys one phone.
Or not...
iPhone 4 Black and White
iPhone 4S Black and White
iPhone 5 Black and White, in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB
It's been a while since I went to school, but I count more than 1 phone there.
"bottom line"
"Bottom line is revenue and profit"
Actually only profit is bottom line. Revenue is top line. The metaphor comes from accounting, and has a precise meaning despite people's tendency to use it loosely to mean 'the most important thing' or suchlike - a precise meaning that can't help being highlighted when you use the metaphor to talk about some actual accounts. The idea is that you start off with the sales figures (revenue), which form the top line of the income statement and basically mean bugger all unless you’re in some sort of ‘biggest company by sales’ competition. Then you go down the income statement removing various types of expense, thereby stating various kinds of profit – gross profit, ebit, ebidta etc - until finally you get to net profit, literally the bottom line of the income statement, which hopefully (if there hasn’t been too much accounting jiggery-pokery) is reasonably representative of how much cash is available at the end of the year for the owners to buy more pies.
