Apple gains ground while Android pushes to 50% share of US market - Page 2

Apple doesn't need to dominate a market at all indeed, but a minimal presence is required and it would be better for Apple if the market is segmented instead of dominated by a single player. Imo Windows 8 phones and tablets are going to be direct competitors to Android and pretty much leave Apple market shares untouched. Go windows ... \ The problem at RIM are bad for Apple too, the more players in the market the better.

Apple is selling more macs because its selling phones, tablets and iPods. If there market share drops it will affect the mac line also. I know those are huge markets but Apple is already big and to growth they need to gain market shares, not lose some.

If it was some kind of contest... sure.

Or... Apple is selling the most phones it has ever sold...

Interesting observation. May I present another? Why do we all think Apple is worried about market share?

I think we're all being distracted by the Apple vs. The World for market share paradigm.

I think Apple's real product is being presented through all its various products. The fundamental thing Apple sells is "User Experience."

Other than the Mac vs. PC ads, has Apple ever targeted a competitor? Apple's ads seem to overwhelmingly show a positive, User Experience spin. It seems to be working.

Did, or does, Apple build hardware that is seriously better than the other hardware competition? But, they charge premium prices for their hardware, they make handsome profits, all without massive market share.

Think about personal computers some more. Apple was making personal computers before windows existed. Windows came along. Apple vanished into being a "rounding error." Under Steve Jobs Apple improved their business picture. Not by racing to the bottom, but by racing to the top in User Experience.

Now think about mobile phones. Apple launched the iPhone. It oozed User Experience. So much so that all the other, entrenched, been around a long time, Apple can't possibly know what they're doing, phone makers suddenly were on the other side. The response, "Hey, we can do that, too!"

I don't think Apple really worries too much about what we call "the competition" here.

I believe Apple is its own biggest competitor. They must continually look out the window and see where we, the customers, the people who use technology, are banging our heads against the wall. And while everybody else is worrying about beating the last penny out of manufacturing costs and improving performance, someone at Apple will notice the trouble we have with technology and suggest a fix.

Consider the Apple Television. Everyone of us has been either beating our heads bloody about the mess or been dodging the remote controls hurled at us by our significant others and cursing those people that can't just FIX it. Steve said he figured it out. He probably did. I expect an extremely high end TV set that will set everybody on their ear and make us wonder why we didn't see that. The iPhone is a perfect example. How many of us wished for years that someone would build a good mobile browser? Why did Nokia and Sony, and HTC, and Samsung just look the other way?

Until they actually have serious competition from someone marketing User Experience, they will not pay that much attention to all this market share chatter. That's the market they own.

According to the comScore data, Apple had the highest percentage gain in the handset market last month. Here again are the Mobile OEM stats from comScore:

1: Samsung. Point change: +0.3
2: LG. Point change: -0.5
3: Motorola: Point change: -0.3
4: Apple. Point change: +1.4
5: RIM. Point change: -0.6

As for OS marketshare, Apple does not compete in the feature phone market. All the other OEM's on the list do. In spite of this, Apple is growing the fastest in the handset space, and doing so by only selling smartphones.

This is because smartphone adoption is on the rise, and the majority of smartphone buyers are choosing Apple.

Another fact: The iPhone is the world's #1 phone.

A final fact: Apple is also the world's second most valuable company after Exxon Mobile.

When you look at the big picture, it's imperially clear that Apple is the world's most successful tech company. As it should be. Apple creates industry transforming innovation. Samsung and gang just copy.

Really depends on what developers are making on the platform. If Android has 50 percent marketshare, and Apple has 30 percent, but every Apple user downloads 3 times more apps per user than an Android user, then Apple is the winning platform, as developers will gravitate towards selling more of their apps, and could care less how many phones are activated.

Furthermore, a fragmented Android platform will make things even less profitable and more laborous for the developer. At theend of the day, the developer will determine the success or death of either platform. No infrastructure, no profits.

The Android demographic will remain the same when flooding the market with low cost phones, and this will be problematic from a host of standpoints.

He/She is perhaps 12.

Erosion of its market share? Apple's market share hasn't been eroding. It's been GROWING.

Apple isn't concerned about gaining the most market share. If it were, it would have more than one model released once a year. Apple would be like Samsung, HTC, and Mot etc. who have 30 different models and release a new one every other week. That's what Apple would do if it wanted to have the highest market share. The only thing that matters is profits. Period. That's why businesses are started and how they are managed to run.

Would you rather have 10 lemonade stands bringing in 50 cents a piece ? or 1 lemonade stand bringing in $10? What does it matter if you have 80% market share if you are only making half as much as the guy with 5%? All that extra effort for less return.

HP has to sell 10 PCs to earn the same profit Apple receives from 1 Mac. That's why HP wants out of the PC business. HP has the most market share but that matters little.

I hesitate to feed the troll, but...

It's difficult to see iOS doomed to a niche future while not only do its sales increase (which can, of course, trail a faster-growing market) but while its market share continues to grow steadily. It is not comparable to the Macintosh-Windows face-off among desktop OSs, a scenario that had Apple playing a role more akin to today's RiM. That is, Windows' share came at the expense of Macintosh's; so far, iOS and Android are both growing at others' expense. Only when iOS's growth begins to trail the overall market's will that be a number that frightens Apple management.

Like what ... since its market share is growing?

Post #26 sums it up nicely...

That's not really correct either. The Mac/Windows analogy fails because a) the Mac never had comparable market share, b) the Windows monopoly was built on the DOS monopoly that IBM gifted to Microsoft and c) DOS/Windows controlled the developer mindshare. Especially on the latter point, the roles are entirely reversed between the marketshare leader and the mindshare leader. But the bottom line is that there aren't really any parallels between that story and this, and the argument from analogy is hopelessly flawed.

Of course, slappy's "prediction" is ironically the nightmare result for Google because it's way past the point where it becomes an antitrust problem on several fronts. I've often thought that the smart thing for Microsoft to do would be to exit the search market and hand Google a nice fat monopoly.

And, yes post #26 does make some good points.

Apple has came up with low cost phones. The 3Gs was pared down to black 8GB only, and the 4 was chopped from 16GB/32GB to only 8GB. That allowed them to have iPhones in all price points from $0 right the way through the top of the line 4S 64GB at $399. Apple's current plan seems to be doing their bottom line perfectly fine, why should they listen to a random person's advice?


Remember that through the summer, the 16 month old iPhone 4 (at $199) and the 28 month old iPhone 3Gs (at $49) were the 2 best selling mobile phones in the United States, and probably several other countries around the world. If that's not 'competing on lower price points', I don't know what is. I know of 5 people who have all gotten the 3Gs since it was dropped to free, and not a single one of them has the first complaint about it as a phone, an iPod, a game platform, or an internet tool. If a serious tech person were to compare the phones, I do agree that they might say the older models are a bit slow, but to the average consumer coming from a feature phone, even a 2+ year old iPhone will completely blow them away.



What erosion? No other tablet manufacturer has ever released -real- sales numbers, so there are no other numbers out there to directly compare to Apple's announced quarterly iPad sales numbers. Let's look at how the competition are faring: HP dropped their tablet and put them on a fire sale less than 3 months after introduction. RIM's Playbook sold so well they also slashed their prices to move the unsold models. Dell dropped both their 5" and 7" streaks. Samsung is the only serious tablet manufacturer left, and their own 'shipped' numbers are a fraction of iPad's numbers in any given quarter, and they themselves admitted their numbers aren't sales to end users. If Apple has seen an erosion of their tablet numbers, that will quickly be regained once all the clearance sales are over.

I think $80+ Billion in the bank will prevent Apple from going anywhere in the foreseeable future. And just wait until this quarter's numbers are released.

Dude, Get ready. The following Pics are FRIGHTENING! Oh My!

Apple Store - Century City/Los Angeles Cali - 12/24/2011



SONY Store - Century City/Los Angeles Cali - 12/24/2011



MICROSOFT Store - Century City/Los Angeles Cali - 12/24/2011



Dude, now tell me...What in the HELL are you talking about??

Mmm, not necessarily, the grow of Samsung can be perfectly hurt by the shrinking sales of dumb phones.

If the majority of buyers of smartphones choose Apple, why the smartphone marketshare gap between Apple and Android is growing?

Dude, what in the hell are you talking about? Worried about what? Amazon itself just named the ipod touch a TOP selling device on it's TOP 2011 list. Apple TV same thing. I guess you "think" it's ONLY about two or three products but IN FACT their whole f-ing line is doing insanely well.

Dude, Get ready. The following Pics are FRIGHTENING! Oh My!

Apple Store - Century City/Los Angeles Cali - 12/24/2011



SONY Store - Century City/Los Angeles Cali - 12/24/2011



MICROSOFT Store - Century City/Los Angeles Cali - 12/24/2011



Dude, now tell me...What in the HELL are you talking about??

A point. That's exactly what I'm providing. A wake up call for those that continue to ignore factual information that are not complimentary to the Apple myth of continued success.

He's probably referring to the fact that MS licensed out their OS across hardware vendors who then all competed for market share which drove prices down and allowed MS to basically monopolize the PC industry.

The problem is that basically after enjoying a long period of initial success, MS is now increasingly becoming irrelevant because that model of operation created a horrible end user experience and lack of innovation. So much so, that around 30% of all Windows users are still using XP which is over ten years old and even though WP7 has gotten solid reviews, no one cares.

This type of propaganda is deceitful. First of all, Apple is one company manufacturing a few products. Those products are mostly sold at the Apple Stores. Compared to the much larger market of their competitors and the vast numbers of channels where one can purchase those product, then of course those stores will not be crowded. One can buy these products practically everywhere. These store traffic comparisons are so silly and does nothing but provide a false sense of success with their retail store. If all Windows or Android products are sold the same way, the lines would dwarf the biggest Apple store lines today.

What factual data? Are you in California??

Verizon?

I mean Verizon ran a TWO FOR ONE promo for a YEAR on DROIDS dude, with giveaways like that Apple would never or could never catch up.

But you seem to ignore one rock solid point. While Droids out sell the one line Apple iphone, they FAIL at profiting or better yet making real cold hard cash where the iphone KILLS the droids...

Really? Read these charts... Doh! Doesn't look like Apples making "wrong" moves at all does it.





http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/10/...the-4g-droids/

What the hell are you talking about? LOL!

Apple stuff is "mostly sold at Apple stores"?

Oh I see, 1200+ Best Buy locations don't matter. Either does 2000+ Radio Shack locations, Verizon Stores, Sprint Stores, AT&T, Fry's, Wal Mart, Target...Do I really need to go on?

Those pics are anecdotal evidence of the sheer power of the Apple Ecosystem dude. It's a company that doesn't just sell phones. Geez. Their iphone sales are PROVING to be a gateway to their laptop line, desktops etc that continue to post DOUBLE DIGIT gains when compared to brands like DELL and HP. Clearly you don't get the real picture.

Here's another one.

Apple Store - Sherman Oaks / Los Angeles California 12/26/2011

Here in Australia, where the Galaxy Tab 10.1 was banned and then released, we received in our store fifteen of them a couple of weeks before Christmas.

We sold three, there are still twelve left.

In the same timeframe we sold sixty-five iPads.

Fandroids only exist on the Internet, when asked to shell out real cash for these products they seem to disappear.

The biggest sellers apart from iPhones are cheap PAYG android phones from Huawei, ZTE. low end Samsung's and HTC's.

You can see this reflected in the figures, well known handset makers (Samsung, HTC, Motorola, LG) are selling x amount, "Android" is selling y amount, something doesn't quite add up and that is all the sales coming from low end, lesser known brands.

Exactly and it's good to see the reports using subscriber share instead of market share. Market share is generally understood to mean what percentage of the market is occupied by a certain product line.

Apple's last report a few months ago was 250 million iOS devices sold (the majority of which were iPhones). Google's last report noted 200 million Android activations (not sure if that includes tablets but Android tablet sales are very low).

Over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, there has been a report of 4.2 million iOS devices activated and 3.7 million Android devices.

At this stage, they are probably level-pegging but Android may still be behind in overall devices owned. The numbers noted in these reports are growth rates. Eventually, I'd expect Android to outsell iOS - probably by the end of 2013 but the ownership/marketshare won't change by a significant amount partly due to the fact nobody wants Android tablets.

The Android marketshare is also split between about 5-10 companies and that's what really matters when it comes to profits. This also has implications for software. Warner Brothers made Arkham City Lockdown exclusive to iOS likely because it can run properly on the majority of iOS devices as well as having a secure distribution platform. Android can be installed on loads of devices with poor graphics capabilities or low amounts of memory and their distribution model is not so appealing:

http://phandroid.com/2011/11/23/infi...d-development/

Over time, this may change but I think Apple will do what it has always done - maintain the mindshare that they have the best quality and the competition are cheaper but lower quality. When the competition tries to charge the same amount of money, they lose because people know they can get a better quality item for around the same price.

Apple and Google are doomed the future is here!

That's not what happened either. IBM was the 1600 lb gorilla in the room circa 1980. Their PCs were guaranteed to take over in business. Microsoft got lucky in that a) IBM didn't demand exclusive rights to DOS and b) because they made the IBM PC spec public. (Although, they may have done both of these things because of their own antitrust issues.) DOS based computers, once IBM entered the market, were guaranteed monopoly marketshare because the primary market at that time was business and, "No one ever got fired for buying IBM."

Microsoft then leveraged that monopoly gift of DOS into a new Windows monopoly, taking advantage of the transition to knock out a few software rivals along the way and develop an Office monopoly on the side.

Microsoft didn't develop a DOS/Windows monopoly because they were clever enough to license widely (a point that even professional "pundits" often seem to not understand), they developed a monopoly because they were lucky enough to ride IBM's coattails back when IBM was computers.

There is no equivalent today of circa 1980 IBM. Not Microsoft, not Google, not Apple*. In part that's because the industry is just so much bigger today. Back around 1980 the computer industry pretty much was IBM, and Apple and Microsoft were fleas in comparison to the 1600 lb gorilla. Analogies of the smartphone market to the early PC market are flawed because they pretend that the same circumstances exist in today's smartphone market as existed in the personal computer market in the early 1980s, whereas nothing could be further from the truth. A couple of coincidental details like someone is licensing an OS and Apple is involved do not a valid analogy make.


* Edit: Not even all 3 of them put together would be the equivalent of ~1980 IBM.

Apple doesn't need to worry about marketshare they need to worry about making a better handset than than Samsung, HTC, or Motorola.

What universe did that happen in? IBM used off the shelf components but their BIOS was completely proprietary and was required for true compatibility with IBM systems and their version of DOS. Compaq spent a large sum of money doing a clean-room reverse engineering of the BIOS. Without this process there would never have been IBM clones and MS would have had to sell unique and incompatible versions of DOS to each company. Compaq (I think there were a couple others that preceded them but they were tiny and Compaq's process was the most legal) reverse engineering the IBM BIOS, without IBM approval, combined with MS's agreement with IBM is what allowed MS to so broadly license DOS.

What are you talking about? How many major stores can't you buy an Apple product in that you can buy an Android product in?

That fact is that people just will not line up for Androids. Even Samsung, the most successful of the bunch has publicly acknowledged that. In fact they have made an entire marketing campaign around that fact.

Making shit up doesn't make you right.

Clearly? Clearly the 3GS is not enough as the entry level model? How do you believe that it is clearly not enough? The fact that it was the #2 selling smartphone in the US (right behind the iPhone 4) in q3 of 2011 shows that it was enough. Clearly.
http://www.dailytech.com/Quick+Note+...ticle23282.htm

It competes quite well with other $0 phones. Most other $0 phones are entry level and use older, less capable components, just like the 3GS. The only difference is Apple doesn't wrap those older components in a new package to fool people into thinking they are getting something new.


That was a promo and in fact it was necessary to stimulate sales. The Galaxy S II LTE is $149 at Rogers today if you sign a 3 year contract. Bell has the 4G (HSPA+) unit on for $99 with 3 year contract.

And Apple is making a $0 phone and making a profit on it. It's called the 3GS. Hell, Rogers has the 8GB iPhone 4 as their $0 phone right now and Bell has it as their $50.


Yeah, that erosion of market share is killing them. Not one other company is selling tablets for a profit right now. The market has shown that to sell any numbers in significant volume, they have to sell it at a loss (see the $99 Touchpad, BB Playbook and Amazon Kindle Fire). The Samsung 10.1 has essentially become the give away product of the year ("Sign up for a cell plan and we'll throw in a Galaxy Tab", "Buy this printer and we'll include a Galaxy tab", "Please just come visit our store and we'll give you a Galaxy Tab, maybe 2).

Outside of those units that are given away fro free or sold at a substantial net loss, Apple hasn't lost any real market share.

You're correct. Allowed it to become cloneable would have been a better choice of words. I didn't mean to imply that they published/public domained the spec, just that they didn't go to any significant lengths to prevent cloning.

I don't think they even 'allowed' it. In fact, IIRC, they sued Compaq to stop it but lost that case since Compaq had been very diligent in their CYA reverse-engineering process. IBM knew they messed up when they realized they had given MS far to broad an agreement with MS and couldn't stop the cloners.

Anyway, the rest of your points are valid and don't rely on the minutia of how the cloners happened. MS got lucky that IBM wasn't more diligent in crafting their agreement and road the IBM/clone gravy train. IBM did the groundwork, Compaq et al spread the word and MS got fat.

Mac : growing indeed
ipods : Flat

Phones : Pretty much flat, went down in Q3 but will get back up in Q4.


Iphone getting back market shares in Q4 because of iphone 4s launch.


Tablets : 25% lost between Q1 and Q4. Key players in tablet market, Q4:

Typical fanboy stats manipulation. It better be selling well since its the only cheap phone Apple has VS all the other android phones. In terms of market share (which is the subject of discussion here) its still getting own.


The problem is its always on sale somewhere. This week its at best buy. And the carriers are the ones absorbing the lost, not Samsung. Its call real world shopping.


again, typical fanboy reaction. We are loosing market share BUT, BUT, Apple is the only one making profits... Apple is loosing market shares and I could not care less about manufacturers profits, Google is still going to get is $$ regardless. It remains to be seen if Amazon bet will work or not.

Most likely because his comments are too childish to be taken seriously by anybody.

Present clear and indisputable facts is fanboy stats manipulation? And yes, it had better be selling well...guess what? It is. You said they 'clearly' needed a $0 phone. They do. And it is outselling any Android $0 phone. Or $100 phone. or $200 phone.

It's getting owned? The most profitable company in the world selling the most profitable handsets and the most profitable platform is getting owned?


It's called loss leaders. The problem is the entire Android ecosystem is build around and sustained by loss leaders. Great business model. And um, yeah, it is Samsung that is absorbing some of the loss. Carriers very carefully negotiate the subsidies with the vendors. Whether that is Samsung, RIM or Apple, when the carriers want to promo with deep discounts, they demand a price break from the vendors..they negotiate with the vendors for their promos. Do you have any knowledge of the cellular market? At all?



Are you french? Profits matter in business. Google may be making money, indirectly, and that's great for them. The fact is that the manufacturers are not. That's not fanboy, that's simple facts.

Amazon has probably the best chance of all of the non-iPad vendors. The market has shown that no one will buy other tablets at a price where the vendors make any money. Amazon's model is acknowledging that and trying to use it to their advantage. That is pretty smart. If no one wants to buy an Android tablet, then give it away and try to make money on the blades. Fortunately for Apple, they can sell the razor and the blade.

And if you had a clue about my history around here you would know I am not a "fanboy". I will criticize Apple and Apple fans as much as I will Android fans. I tend to jump if in I see either trying to end-run the facts, much as you have been trying.

Edit:
Also, you are correct that for now google is the only one in the non-iPad space that is making any money. The manufacturers certainly aren't. You say you don't care about that, but if they aren't making money, then google won't make much either. They will all look for ways to try and become profitable in the tablet business and Amazon seems to have found the best bet. Guess what? Their bet cuts google out on most of the money.

Market share matters but not at the expense of profitability. The modern Apple has never been about market share. They chase profitability and they have been wildly successful at it. Money matters in business.

3 points to add to the discussion.

1. Apple (AT&T in the US) just started selling the 3gs for free. It's still only on AT&T & from the anecdotal reports I've read, it is selling very well. It will likely be close to another year before Sprint & Verizon get a 'free' iphone model to sell (when the newest iphone comes out & the 4 becomes the free model). Comaprisons at that point will be a lot more useful, as Apple & Andoird will be competing on equal footing on all three of the largest US networks. As it is now, if you want a free smartphone, but want/have to use Verizon or Sprint, the iphone is out.

2. Microsoft had the advantage versus macs of being the choice of companies. That's not been the case so far with phones. With everything being standards compatible, most IT departments don't care if you use an iphone or a droid, they support both. When the choice is left up to the end user, not the IT department, it's reasonable to expect that the Windows/Mac situation will not play out the same way with iphones/droid

3. Apple computers had the aura (whether true or not) of being a lot more expensive than PC's. At this point, iphones & droids are about even in cost. Even if you compare a $200 iphone to a free doid, you're only talking about a $200 difference. The spread on computers, under certain scenarios, was many times that number.

Or maybe the reason he has not been banned is because he doesn't violate any of the forum rules.

So it's like the older brother in the backseat of the car his fingers in your face but chanting "I'm not touching you"?

That's exactly what he is. He's a hit and run con artist.

Notice that he logged off immediately after posting his one post in this thread.

And the next twenty posts were people taking the bait to tell him he's wrong.

I don't like that at all.

No it is more like... "Mommy, Jimmy said a swear word."

No one is being forced to read his posts. However unpopular his comments are, he does not make any personal attacks as far as I know. Maybe he is a troll, maybe a paid shill, maybe just delusional. It is the people who think they need to offer a rebuttal to his comments who are clueless. Maybe you should put them all on your ignore list.

But we're hearing the swear words. We're seeing his posts. Even if you ignore the user you still his posts every time another replies to them. I don't think a personal attack is the only way to get banned. He's purposely writing in order to jack the thread, to keep it off topic. There is precedence for banning based on that criteria. On top of that, all he's doing is parroting the same BS rhetoric over again which gets new posters setting the record straight on each new thread he posts. That's trolling and it should be stopped. He's not stating an opinion. He's not part of the discussion. His purpose is to ruin an otherwise useful discussion.