IDC: iPhone shipment growth slows as smartphone market expansion accelerates in Q2
Research firm IDC released smartphone shipment estimates for the second quarter of 2013 late Thursday, with Apple seeing its second-lowest year-to-year growth in almost four years, while the overall market accelerated.
Source: IDC
According to the IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, smartphone shipments grew 52.3 percent year-over-year in the June quarter, hitting 237.9 million units compared to 156.2 million units in 2012.
The amount of growth experienced by the worldwide smartphone market was the highest annual rate for the sector in five quarters. Sequentially, quarterly shipments were up 10 percent from the 216.3 million units shipped in the first quarter of the year.
"The smartphone market is still a rising tide that's lifting many ships," said Senior Research Analyst Kevin Restivo in a prepared statement. "Though Samsung and Apple are the dominant players, the market is as fragmented as ever. There is ample opportunity for smartphone vendors with differentiated offerings."
Samsung retained a dominant lead in the second quarter, capturing 30.4 percent of the market on shipments of 72.4 million handsets. Apple came in second with 31.2 million iPhones shipped, good enough for a 13.1 percent market share.
Despite owning a combined 43.5 percent of the worldwide market, the two companies' year-over-year growth rates trailed the market average and were the lowest out of this quarter's top-five vendors.
IDC speculates that Apple's slowdown can be attributed to customers holding out for a new iPhone model this fall. The company's growth is expected to accelerate if a rumored low-cost version is also launched later this year.
Coming in third was LG, which shipped 12.1 million units to take 5.1 percent of the market, up 108.6 percent from the same period in 2012. Lenovo, which showed the most growth with a 130.6 percent year-to-year jump, managed 11.6 million units for a 4.7 market share. Finally, ZTE rounded out the top five with 4.2 percent of the market on 10.1 million units shipped, up 57.8 percent from the year previous.
Source: IDC
As for overall mobile phone shipments, Apple held onto its third place position behind Samsung and Nokia. Adding feature phones to the mix, Samsung ended up with 113.4 million shipped units and 26.2 percent of the market for the quarter ending in June, up 16.3 percent year-to-year. Nokia dropped 27.1 percent from the second quarter of 2012, shipping 61.1 million units for a 14.1 percent market share.
Coming in fourth behind Apple was LG with 16.2 million units for 3.7 percent of the market, up 23.7 percent from last year, while ZTE's shipments declined 1.1 percent to 15 million units for a 3.5 percent share of the market.
In all, mobile phone shipments hit 432.1 million during the second quarter, up 6 percent year-to-year.
Source: IDC
According to the IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, smartphone shipments grew 52.3 percent year-over-year in the June quarter, hitting 237.9 million units compared to 156.2 million units in 2012.
The amount of growth experienced by the worldwide smartphone market was the highest annual rate for the sector in five quarters. Sequentially, quarterly shipments were up 10 percent from the 216.3 million units shipped in the first quarter of the year.
"The smartphone market is still a rising tide that's lifting many ships," said Senior Research Analyst Kevin Restivo in a prepared statement. "Though Samsung and Apple are the dominant players, the market is as fragmented as ever. There is ample opportunity for smartphone vendors with differentiated offerings."
Samsung retained a dominant lead in the second quarter, capturing 30.4 percent of the market on shipments of 72.4 million handsets. Apple came in second with 31.2 million iPhones shipped, good enough for a 13.1 percent market share.
Despite owning a combined 43.5 percent of the worldwide market, the two companies' year-over-year growth rates trailed the market average and were the lowest out of this quarter's top-five vendors.
IDC speculates that Apple's slowdown can be attributed to customers holding out for a new iPhone model this fall. The company's growth is expected to accelerate if a rumored low-cost version is also launched later this year.
Coming in third was LG, which shipped 12.1 million units to take 5.1 percent of the market, up 108.6 percent from the same period in 2012. Lenovo, which showed the most growth with a 130.6 percent year-to-year jump, managed 11.6 million units for a 4.7 market share. Finally, ZTE rounded out the top five with 4.2 percent of the market on 10.1 million units shipped, up 57.8 percent from the year previous.
Source: IDC
As for overall mobile phone shipments, Apple held onto its third place position behind Samsung and Nokia. Adding feature phones to the mix, Samsung ended up with 113.4 million shipped units and 26.2 percent of the market for the quarter ending in June, up 16.3 percent year-to-year. Nokia dropped 27.1 percent from the second quarter of 2012, shipping 61.1 million units for a 14.1 percent market share.
Coming in fourth behind Apple was LG with 16.2 million units for 3.7 percent of the market, up 23.7 percent from last year, while ZTE's shipments declined 1.1 percent to 15 million units for a 3.5 percent share of the market.
In all, mobile phone shipments hit 432.1 million during the second quarter, up 6 percent year-to-year.
Comments
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24239313
Quote:
Originally Posted by johnnielse
It's time to start talking about phone share instead of smartphone share. It's starting to make little sense to isolate smartphones.
http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24239313
What? Why? With feature phones going the way of the dodo, who cares what their share is seeing how every year it accounts for less and less of the overall pie?
On a side note, I feel bad for HTC not even making it to the top 5. Heck, they couldn't even beat Lenovo for Pete's sake. I really wanted to like the One, as it's so well put together compared to most plasticy Android phones, but that gimmicky camera just ruined it for me. Unless it's a phone marketed and priced for 'tweens, "Good enough for Facebook" just isn't good enough.
With the Korean company falling short and losing in saturated market with extended price-drop on shares.
What qualifies a phone to be called a smart phone. Are there any minimum specifications it has to meet?
Quote:
Originally Posted by copeland
What qualifies a phone to be called a smart phone. Are there any minimum specifications it has to meet?
The Wikipedia article is a good guide. There's no minimum specification as (a) specifications are constantly changing and (b) it's a marketing term.
With the more affordable Iphone on it's way, the situation will look very different next year. Apple has the best operating system in IOS 7 and just need a bigger variety of devices to put it on.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cash907
What? Why? With feature phones going the way of the dodo, who cares what their share is seeing how every year it accounts for less and less of the overall pie?
On a side note, I feel bad for HTC not even making it to the top 5. Heck, they couldn't even beat Lenovo for Pete's sake. I really wanted to like the One, as it's so well put together compared to most plasticy Android phones, but that gimmicky camera just ruined it for me. Unless it's a phone marketed and priced for 'tweens, "Good enough for Facebook" just isn't good enough.
This article pretty much sums up my thoughts on the matter.
http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2013/5/23/on-market-share
Quote:
Originally Posted by copeland
What qualifies a phone to be called a smart phone. Are there any minimum specifications it has to meet?
I would say it is a phone which the user can add or subtract features to in the form of apps, which can be sourced independently of the phone manufacturer.
In Canada, we started seeing a trend of calling all phones "smartphones" (because, hey they can all text-message and do photos!) and the word "superphone" made an entrance. Thankfully that went away, but now "smartphones" are just called "phones" and the carriers/retailers use the term "basic phones" or "classic phones" for the low cost feature phones (wich seam to be differentiated by a small screen or a flipping mechanism).
Quote:
Originally Posted by johnnielse
This article pretty much sums up my thoughts on the matter.
http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2013/5/23/on-market-share
So you thought of all those points and Ben just happened to scoop you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by copeland
What qualifies a phone to be called a smart phone. Are there any minimum specifications it has to meet?
No minium requirements. Which is why Samsung can include all sorts of low-end junk devices into their smartphone totals which the Android fans then use to say Samsung is killing Apple. Remember when Samsung "switched" their reporting abour 2 years ago? Suddenly they had a huge spike in smartphone sales and a huge drop in feature phone sales. Does anyone really believe that in the space of one quarter that Samsung smartphone sales tripled while feature phones dropped to 1/3? All Samsung did was "reclassify" what they call a smartphone. Sort of how Google recently changed their method of showing Android version market share by only counting devices "regularly" accessing Google Play. It made JB and ICS numbers go up and GB down.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cnocbui
I would say it is a phone which the user can add or subtract features to in the form of apps, which can be sourced independently of the phone manufacturer.
Samsung would say this too. Which allows them to post huge sales numbers even though more than half of the "smartphones" they sell don't even compete against Apple devices.
Seems as if either there is data missing - or perhaps the 50% was just cherry picking from one seller for some limited block of time and region (a single quarter in the US only) and perhaps even includes second hand devices. Which is another point that has always bothered me with any statistic related to market share of any Apple product. I assert that the percentage of Apple products that remain in use either as a secondary device or as a hand-me down/trade-in is far higher than competitor products. Another way to look at that would be if 80% of all Apple products sold in the last 10 years are still in used - compared maybe 20% of all competitor products - where Apple sold 100,000,000 devices that is 80,000,000 still in use - and the competitors sold 300,000,000 devices that is only 60,000,000 still in use. I am making up numbers here - but the point is that if Apple iOS devices only account for 20% of unit sales each quarter but those devices live two or three times longer than other devices then over time the true market share is two or three times higher than an accounting of devices sold would ever reveal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by copeland
What qualifies a phone to be called a smart phone. Are there any minimum specifications it has to meet?
The minimum requirement should be able to surf the internet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by All Day Breakfast
There's nothing surprising here. The big growth of smartphones is at the very low end as manufacturers replace cheap feature phones with smartphone offerings. It's not a market Apple plays in nor will they ever.At themiddle and higher end the story is much different.
I agree 100%. It should be clear most people are 'forced' to upgrade to a smartphone from a feature phone because Samsung and Nokia produced some new smartphones almost as cheap as the feature phone. But the truth of the facts are most of the people are not used to use the phone to surf the internet. I think the analysts are wrong calling Apple to make cheap iPhones in the range of $200-300. Apple will not make money on them. Apple will not make money out of App Store or iTunes either.