These reports are always interesting, but the real numbers are profits. As long as Apple keeps making money, our platform will continue to improve. And as long as the platform makes money for developers, things will just get better and better.
Yeah, yeah, it's an ego boost to be the biggest, but the real number that matters is money.
The numbers for Microsoft aren't as dire as suggested here since they've got multiple platforms. True, their older platforms are probably losing share faster than new one is gaining ground... but still... it's not quite as dire of a situation is these oversimplified numbers suggest.
Also: I'm always amused when people compare ONE PHONE against countless phones phones phones by countless companies. I dare anyone here to even try to list all of the Android phones. Good luck with that!
Also: I'm always amused when people compare ONE PHONE against countless phones phones phones by countless companies. I dare anyone here to even try to list all of the Android phones. Good luck with that!
The thing is, what is Nokia's platform breakdown? Most of Nokia's handsets are feature phones, Android and iOS are not feature phone OSs. Care needs to be taken when you make comparisons, otherwise you're liable to compare offerings in very different categories. Stated another way, I don't see why they'd dump Symbian if it was really pulling in the numbers that it should.
Oh absolutely, and even Symbian phones that are categorized as smartphones are really just feature-phone++. But as you also pointed out a lot of Samsung's sales are also feature-phone. Heck a lot of the smartphones are Bada, which is only a smartphone if you squint and tilt your head to one side.
I think any survey between android and iPhone is usually unfair... When you talk about Android, youre talking about the hundreds of Android phones out there. When you talk about iPhones, especially the iPhone 4, you're talking about one model by one company. For more accurate survey, I believe one person already said this, the survey should be between iOS and Google Android, or iPhone 4 vs one Android phone. I believe iPhone is the most sold phone and that no other one Android model broke the record (this is to my knowledge; please correct me if I'm wrong.)
Yes, Apple products may be and most are expensive compared to it's competitors. But you should know, Apple product do last very long time as they are quality products. The sophistication and simplicity of Apple's design is really worth the price. This is my opinion, of course, and some others might dislike Apple's design theory, and that's perfectly fine. But to compare Android phones to iPhones, it has to be fair, model to model or OS to OS, not OS to one single phone.
AGREED
Apple has 3 models of iphone out there
Androids has scores of models coming on and off the selling floor each .
It should be evident that the two can't be directly compared if you're looking for a single smartphone sales champ. If there were only one Android OS phone and one Blackberry and one WM7, then go for it. Or if there were 25+ models running licensed iOS versions. But there isn't. Of course if there's only one phone available from Apple it would be expected to outsell (for the foreseeable future) any other specific single phone running any of the other OS's.
It's really a silly argument.
Please re-read. You completely missed my point.
But just to play along, as per your response... having only an 11.5% greater reach using multiple devices on a single OS than a single device on a single OS says quite a bit about Android (no doubt), but it says more (IMO) about Apple (speculative "hype" set aside). My point (back on track) is that none of this matters. People will argue over it until they're blue in the face. Everyone has a different figure to show or short run statistic to quote.
As a regular reader of the usual Apple sites (being an Apple fanboy myself), one regularly gets to read gleeful stories about how "RIM CEOs didn't see X coming", "Ballmer didn't see Y coming", etc., and then some triumphalist account of the victory of the iPod, iPad, etc. I think it is time someone wrote an honest article about how Jobs didn't see the success of Android coming: the OS went from 0 to market leader in 2 years in the smartphone market... Here is a competitor who, with a much inferior, but cheaper and universally licensed OS, is overtaking Apple in leaps and bounds. Anyone been around in the 90s, sound familiar? I keep hearing the argument that "market share is for vanity, profits are what really counts, smartphone OS is not the same as desktop OS, etc. etc.", and I'm not convinced. What almost killed Apple in the 90s was that they dramatically lost market share, and I'm not sure that the same won't happen again, in the long run, in the phone market. We're still in the equivalent of the 80s, here, when the Macintosh just came out, and it looked like Apple would rule the world until kingdom come. But they're repeating the same mistakes again.
I don't think that your analysis is correct nor your recollection of history. The Android is Windows analogy has been raised and dashed many times over the past 2 years. Phones are nothing like PC's and phones are only one segment of the overall Post-PC market (which Apple continues to dominate). Apple has never been the market leader in smartphones at any point in its life, but remains the market leader in its chosen segment - high-end smartphones. It massively outsells all high-end Androids/WP7/WebOS put together. The way Apple dominates the financials of the entire phone industry (as it now does in PCs) is totally unlike any former situation with Mac in the 80s/90s where Apple was always way behind the IBM PC/compatibles and then specifically behind MS/Windows. Apple never dominated in units or financially throughout the early/mid Mac days, no matter how much Apple fans want to recall that they did. Today, Apple makes 4% of all PCs and takes over 33% of all the entire PC industry profits. Lenovo would be better off sticking its cash in a CD than make computers (1.5% net margins) and that goes for most PC makers.
If Apple can own 25-33% of the (smart)phone market going forward (ie slow steady growth as it is doing), it will be making phenomenal (see WalMart size) revenue and Exxon/Mobil sized profits given the growth of the underlying market. If it creates a serious $250 unlocked phone, it could take 40%+. Either way, Android mopping up the "Anything But Apple" votes, the "want an iPhone but it's not on my carrier", "the guy in the shop said this was the best one" or the "I'm a nerd and I love rooting" crowd may take 50-60% of the market units but it will always be a far less valuable platform to Google, OEMs and developers. It does not really limit Apple nor its ecosystem. Also, given that iOS owners seem to spend some major multiple (from 5X-18X) on content and apps vs. Android users, it would take a lot more than a doubling of share vs. iOS to make the Android world remotely as valuable as iOS to all the constituencies that count.
Your assumption that to be the dominant player, you need to rule the unit share charts is vastly oversimplistic. You just need to dominate the right end of the sales charts. That, Apple is doing very well and the absolute economics of phones does not mean that even an iPhone is out of the easy reach of most middle income people in the world. It is not losing share, it is doubling sales every year, still with a predominantly premium phone line up.
Did Apple see the "Windows" of the phone world coming from Google - maybe, maybe not - probably expected RIM/MS/Nokia to be the ones to make massive OEM arrangements to combat the iPhone, but not knowing it was Google does not mean they weren't entirely ready for the competition. I think it is clear that this time, Apple learned from its mistakes to create the ultimate ecosystem, maintain brand loyalty in a community 4X the size of the Mac user-base, create and dominate 2 other categories (Touch PMPs/Tablets) and has so far avoided making any particularly egregious new ones.
No, that was my point - the numbers I'm interested in haven't been released. I'd settle for which OEM has the largest consumer share of smartphones, but even for that I'd need to know what percent of Samsung/Moto/LGs handsets were smartphones
We do know that Apple, RIM and Palm only make smartphones, so we know their share of consumers are the same as platform share.
ie.
Apple - 26.6%
RIM - 24.7%
Palm - 2.4%
So there's 46.3% left to be divided up between Samsung/LG/Moto/HTC - we'll assume Symbian is at 0%.
If we ignore HTC & SE and assume that the other 3 have a roughly equal proportion of smartphones it would be
Samsung - 18.82%
Moto -11.5%
LG - 16%
In which case Apple is now the number one maker of smartphones in the US market. But that's based on a lot of supposition, and if it's the case why hasn't it been shouted out at any point by Apple PR?
It gets even more pronounced if we try to look at current sales instead of share existing handsets. There we know that Apple is up at more like 31% (from the Nielsen numbers).
I've thumped, dropped, tossed, and carried it in my pocket with assorted nasty sharp objects and it hasn't cracked scratched or failed. If that's "delicate", I can't wait until they toughen it up more! I frankly don't need any cracked iPhones and haven't ever had one in spite of my treatment of it. Besides a cracked back only costs 29 bucks to replace anyway - should that ever happen. Perhaps if you stopped moshing with it taped to your forehead, or driving over it?? *wink*
The phone is durable, but an accidental drop of 4ft to a parquet on OSB floor was all it took to break my iPhone 4 screen. I think it was largely very bad luck on the angle of impact. Otherwise, the screen has survived worse.
I've thumped, dropped, tossed, and carried it in my pocket with assorted nasty sharp objects and it hasn't cracked scratched or failed. If that's "delicate", I can't wait until they toughen it up more! I frankly don't need any cracked iPhones and haven't ever had one in spite of my treatment of it. Besides a cracked back only costs 29 bucks to replace anyway - should that ever happen. Perhaps if you stopped moshing with it taped to your forehead, or driving over it?? *wink*
anecdotal evidence is irrelevant. look at the data because its been determined to be the most delicate and the most often broken phone.
The highlighted section is a statement I wonder about all the time. Aple needs competitors to keep innovating? Really? So when they jumped into the smartphone market segment all the other OEM were poised to leap ahead in design and function but Apple beat them to it? Not when you compare the Nokia N series, the Android pre-iPhone prototype, the BB Bolds/Curves/Tours, HTC's P, T or S series (pre Android), all of these and the rest were incrementalists not innovators. Apple stepped out in front of pretty much everyone, established the capacitive touch benchmark. Apple spent some time tightening up its own platform and when the time is right - they will do it again.
And again, the whole "tablet" thing. Netbooks. Who else is delivering innovation at the same rate Apple is - and I do mean deliver - not just "talk". So if Apple is characteristically out-innovating everyone else without there being significant competition - what good is there in saying that "competition is great"? Or is this yet another commerical truism that is used to justify mere incrementalism and "running in the pack"?
of course competition compels innovation. the dominant players before apple were fairly established in their product lineup. if apple hadn't differentiated itself to the amazing level that they did, then it would be a very different story for apple today. they blew everyone out of the water because of their innovation.
It's not clear, it depends on the methodology for the first number. I think it may be a survey of platforms by current phones in circulation and use. ie. Just because MS has 6% of the smartphones in use doesn't mean that they're selling 6% of phones now.
The wording was clearer on the NIelsen survey which almost exactly matched the numbers for Apple & Android with this graphic from an earlier article
The variance between RIM & MS in the two surveys is interesting.
Umm.. I don't get it.. Smartphone 55% of recent phone acquirer market (same as 3 months previous), Android is 27% of this (same as 3 months previous), iPhone(iOS) increases 7% to 17% in same 3 months. How is it that iPhones are now driving the market? Seems the 27% that Android represents still 'drives' the smartphone section of the market.
I think any survey between android and iPhone is usually unfair... When you talk about Android, youre talking about the hundreds of Android phones out there. When you talk about iPhones, especially the iPhone 4, you're talking about one model by one company. For more accurate survey, I believe one person already said this, the survey should be between iOS and Google Android, or iPhone 4 vs one Android phone. I believe iPhone is the most sold phone and that no other one Android model broke the record (this is to my knowledge; please correct me if I'm wrong.)
Yes, Apple products may be and most are expensive compared to it's competitors. But you should know, Apple product do last very long time as they are quality products. The sophistication and simplicity of Apple's design is really worth the price. This is my opinion, of course, and some others might dislike Apple's design theory, and that's perfectly fine. But to compare Android phones to iPhones, it has to be fair, model to model or OS to OS, not OS to one single phone.
Well, it depends on the topic of the survey.. I believe the survey in this thread is about Android OS and iPhone OS (I doubt they deliberately used only selected iPhone 4 numbers and excluded iPhone 3GS and it's still working predecessors). As the survey is about their relative growth, in this instance it is 'fair'. Comparing Apple's 'one model for all' approach to Android's 'choose the model that suits YOU' approach is like comparing Ford Motor's initial Model-T vs the selection that other car makers developed. They each work for their respective customers.
I agree you do pay for the infrastructure and service you get from Apple by buying their products, but I don't think I like how they come across as arrogant in the extreme in their responses to problems that crop up in their products. Bugs in iTunes, iPhone4 antennae and recent trojan to mention a few. I realize part of their marketing is their mystique of being safe from such problems, but saying 'don't do that' (to put it mildly) is just plain unhelpful.
If you are looking for comparisons of model to model, iPhone to a single Android phone, you have to look no further than a search using your selected iPhone model and the Android phone model as search terms in any search engine.
Skewed statistics. iOS is 1 phone (disregarding successive generations). Android is multiple phones (again disregarding successive generations). Take the largest selling Android phone compared to the iPhone and I think you'll find these statistics paint a much different picture. Not going to say one is better than the other. Competition is good for the consumer so both sides win in my opinion. In fact Apple themselves welcomed the competition from day one, openly. So why even bother trying to determine which is the better platform? If we truly succeed in accomplishing this and shutting out either OS, we will only be hurting ourselves.
Ah, but the numbers never really did point to the 'better' platform, just the more popular one. For one reason or another there are more Android subscribers each quarter than iPhone. It may be price, it may be features, heck it may even be because someone they know has one.
What I would like to see are numbers giving sales figures. I mean sales, not "sales" as in free with contract, or buy one get one. How many handsets were actually exchanged for cash in addition to a contract? The reason I ask is because two of my friends use Android smartphones ONLY because they came "free" with the contract.
Android is capturing so much of the market with handsets and little of app sales because most Android users don't want to pay for anything they don't have to. Neither of my friends leave on their 3G service because they chose the lowest data plan. They don't buy any apps either.
I can't see that the Android "giveaway" can be sustained. I'm probably wrong though.
Free with contract is good.. Mobile phone providers are concerned more with the long term contracts than the sale of the single device.. From the Provider's point of view I would bet the income gained from the larger number of Android long-term subscribers trump the income they get from the iPhone subscribers. And that's before any subscriber profit-sharing to Apple is taken out (assuming that practice still exists like it does today in Japan).
How do your friends make phone calls if they keep turning off their 3G service? If those free apps are doing what they want them to do, why argue about it? It sounds like you're disappointed someone isn't making money off your friends.
The Android 'giveaway' as you put it is easily sustainable.. The cost of the phone is recovered via the long-term subscription plan, Google gets no profit from the phone sales and very little from the app sales since a majority of the slice that comes out of the app dev's sales goes to the mobile phone providers. Google gets its profits from the users using their services (Google Voice, Google Maps, Google Search, etc.). Manufacturers don't give their phones away, they sell them to the providers. No one is losing money. It is just a different business model than Apple.
No, that was my point - the numbers I'm interested in haven't been released. I'd settle for which OEM has the largest consumer share of smartphones, but even for that I'd need to know what percent of Samsung/Moto/LGs handsets were smartphones
We do know that Apple, RIM and Palm only make smartphones, so we know their share of consumers are the same as platform share.
ie.
Apple - 26.6%
RIM - 24.7%
Palm - 2.4%
So there's 46.3% left to be divided up between Samsung/LG/Moto/HTC - we'll assume Symbian is at 0%.
If we ignore HTC & SE and assume that the other 3 have a roughly equal proportion of smartphones it would be
Samsung - 18.82%
Moto -11.5%
LG - 16%
In which case Apple is now the number one maker of smartphones in the US market. But that's based on a lot of supposition, and if it's the case why hasn't it been shouted out at any point by Apple PR?
It gets even more pronounced if we try to look at current sales instead of share existing handsets. There we know that Apple is up at more like 31% (from the Nielsen numbers).
I don't understand where the 31% comes from.. If you take the nielsen's report claim of 1% market share increase (26%(Feb-Apr) to 27% (Mar-May)) for iPhone and compare it to 2% market share increase (36%-38% (same period)) for Android smartphones, I would say that Android sold more phones 'currently'.. Since the market share increase is compared over a similar time period, it is reasonable to say that the share increase reflects a similar trend in recent sales.
If you don't mind please show what process lead you to your estimate of 31%.
Comments
Yeah, yeah, it's an ego boost to be the biggest, but the real number that matters is money.
Also: I'm always amused when people compare ONE PHONE against countless phones phones phones by countless companies. I dare anyone here to even try to list all of the Android phones. Good luck with that!
Also: I'm always amused when people compare ONE PHONE against countless phones phones phones by countless companies. I dare anyone here to even try to list all of the Android phones. Good luck with that!
And the amusement is on...
How must be compared OS marketshare?
The thing is, what is Nokia's platform breakdown? Most of Nokia's handsets are feature phones, Android and iOS are not feature phone OSs. Care needs to be taken when you make comparisons, otherwise you're liable to compare offerings in very different categories. Stated another way, I don't see why they'd dump Symbian if it was really pulling in the numbers that it should.
Oh absolutely, and even Symbian phones that are categorized as smartphones are really just feature-phone++. But as you also pointed out a lot of Samsung's sales are also feature-phone. Heck a lot of the smartphones are Bada, which is only a smartphone if you squint and tilt your head to one side.
I think any survey between android and iPhone is usually unfair... When you talk about Android, youre talking about the hundreds of Android phones out there. When you talk about iPhones, especially the iPhone 4, you're talking about one model by one company. For more accurate survey, I believe one person already said this, the survey should be between iOS and Google Android, or iPhone 4 vs one Android phone. I believe iPhone is the most sold phone and that no other one Android model broke the record (this is to my knowledge; please correct me if I'm wrong.)
Yes, Apple products may be and most are expensive compared to it's competitors. But you should know, Apple product do last very long time as they are quality products. The sophistication and simplicity of Apple's design is really worth the price. This is my opinion, of course, and some others might dislike Apple's design theory, and that's perfectly fine. But to compare Android phones to iPhones, it has to be fair, model to model or OS to OS, not OS to one single phone.
AGREED
Apple has 3 models of iphone out there
Androids has scores of models coming on and off the selling floor each .
so 160 odd android models phone
against
.....3 Iphone models
160
vs
3
Apple far out sell's all comers by far .
Weird data day.
9
It should be evident that the two can't be directly compared if you're looking for a single smartphone sales champ. If there were only one Android OS phone and one Blackberry and one WM7, then go for it. Or if there were 25+ models running licensed iOS versions. But there isn't. Of course if there's only one phone available from Apple it would be expected to outsell (for the foreseeable future) any other specific single phone running any of the other OS's.
It's really a silly argument.
Please re-read. You completely missed my point.
But just to play along, as per your response... having only an 11.5% greater reach using multiple devices on a single OS than a single device on a single OS says quite a bit about Android (no doubt), but it says more (IMO) about Apple (speculative "hype" set aside). My point (back on track) is that none of this matters. People will argue over it until they're blue in the face. Everyone has a different figure to show or short run statistic to quote.
As a regular reader of the usual Apple sites (being an Apple fanboy myself), one regularly gets to read gleeful stories about how "RIM CEOs didn't see X coming", "Ballmer didn't see Y coming", etc., and then some triumphalist account of the victory of the iPod, iPad, etc. I think it is time someone wrote an honest article about how Jobs didn't see the success of Android coming: the OS went from 0 to market leader in 2 years in the smartphone market... Here is a competitor who, with a much inferior, but cheaper and universally licensed OS, is overtaking Apple in leaps and bounds. Anyone been around in the 90s, sound familiar? I keep hearing the argument that "market share is for vanity, profits are what really counts, smartphone OS is not the same as desktop OS, etc. etc.", and I'm not convinced. What almost killed Apple in the 90s was that they dramatically lost market share, and I'm not sure that the same won't happen again, in the long run, in the phone market. We're still in the equivalent of the 80s, here, when the Macintosh just came out, and it looked like Apple would rule the world until kingdom come. But they're repeating the same mistakes again.
I don't think that your analysis is correct nor your recollection of history. The Android is Windows analogy has been raised and dashed many times over the past 2 years. Phones are nothing like PC's and phones are only one segment of the overall Post-PC market (which Apple continues to dominate). Apple has never been the market leader in smartphones at any point in its life, but remains the market leader in its chosen segment - high-end smartphones. It massively outsells all high-end Androids/WP7/WebOS put together. The way Apple dominates the financials of the entire phone industry (as it now does in PCs) is totally unlike any former situation with Mac in the 80s/90s where Apple was always way behind the IBM PC/compatibles and then specifically behind MS/Windows. Apple never dominated in units or financially throughout the early/mid Mac days, no matter how much Apple fans want to recall that they did. Today, Apple makes 4% of all PCs and takes over 33% of all the entire PC industry profits. Lenovo would be better off sticking its cash in a CD than make computers (1.5% net margins) and that goes for most PC makers.
If Apple can own 25-33% of the (smart)phone market going forward (ie slow steady growth as it is doing), it will be making phenomenal (see WalMart size) revenue and Exxon/Mobil sized profits given the growth of the underlying market. If it creates a serious $250 unlocked phone, it could take 40%+. Either way, Android mopping up the "Anything But Apple" votes, the "want an iPhone but it's not on my carrier", "the guy in the shop said this was the best one" or the "I'm a nerd and I love rooting" crowd may take 50-60% of the market units but it will always be a far less valuable platform to Google, OEMs and developers. It does not really limit Apple nor its ecosystem. Also, given that iOS owners seem to spend some major multiple (from 5X-18X) on content and apps vs. Android users, it would take a lot more than a doubling of share vs. iOS to make the Android world remotely as valuable as iOS to all the constituencies that count.
Your assumption that to be the dominant player, you need to rule the unit share charts is vastly oversimplistic. You just need to dominate the right end of the sales charts. That, Apple is doing very well and the absolute economics of phones does not mean that even an iPhone is out of the easy reach of most middle income people in the world. It is not losing share, it is doubling sales every year, still with a predominantly premium phone line up.
Did Apple see the "Windows" of the phone world coming from Google - maybe, maybe not - probably expected RIM/MS/Nokia to be the ones to make massive OEM arrangements to combat the iPhone, but not knowing it was Google does not mean they weren't entirely ready for the competition. I think it is clear that this time, Apple learned from its mistakes to create the ultimate ecosystem, maintain brand loyalty in a community 4X the size of the Mac user-base, create and dominate 2 other categories (Touch PMPs/Tablets) and has so far avoided making any particularly egregious new ones.
comScore Reports May 2011 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share
Top Mobile OEMs
3 Month Avg. Ending May 2011
Samsung: 24.8%
LG: 21.1%
Motorola: 15.1%
Apple: 8.7%
RIM: 8.1%
http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events...r_Market_Share
Ok - first, that's not only smartphones, that's the entire handset segment.
second that's not sales, that's share of subscribers.
Next time try reading the little words that come alongside the pretty numbers
Cool. Got a URL more to your liking?
No, that was my point - the numbers I'm interested in haven't been released. I'd settle for which OEM has the largest consumer share of smartphones, but even for that I'd need to know what percent of Samsung/Moto/LGs handsets were smartphones
We do know that Apple, RIM and Palm only make smartphones, so we know their share of consumers are the same as platform share.
ie.
Apple - 26.6%
RIM - 24.7%
Palm - 2.4%
So there's 46.3% left to be divided up between Samsung/LG/Moto/HTC - we'll assume Symbian is at 0%.
If we ignore HTC & SE and assume that the other 3 have a roughly equal proportion of smartphones it would be
Samsung - 18.82%
Moto -11.5%
LG - 16%
In which case Apple is now the number one maker of smartphones in the US market. But that's based on a lot of supposition, and if it's the case why hasn't it been shouted out at any point by Apple PR?
It gets even more pronounced if we try to look at current sales instead of share existing handsets. There we know that Apple is up at more like 31% (from the Nielsen numbers).
I've thumped, dropped, tossed, and carried it in my pocket with assorted nasty sharp objects and it hasn't cracked scratched or failed. If that's "delicate", I can't wait until they toughen it up more! I frankly don't need any cracked iPhones and haven't ever had one in spite of my treatment of it. Besides a cracked back only costs 29 bucks to replace anyway - should that ever happen. Perhaps if you stopped moshing with it taped to your forehead, or driving over it?? *wink*
The phone is durable, but an accidental drop of 4ft to a parquet on OSB floor was all it took to break my iPhone 4 screen. I think it was largely very bad luck on the angle of impact. Otherwise, the screen has survived worse.
Or cheap.
I've thumped, dropped, tossed, and carried it in my pocket with assorted nasty sharp objects and it hasn't cracked scratched or failed. If that's "delicate", I can't wait until they toughen it up more! I frankly don't need any cracked iPhones and haven't ever had one in spite of my treatment of it. Besides a cracked back only costs 29 bucks to replace anyway - should that ever happen. Perhaps if you stopped moshing with it taped to your forehead, or driving over it?? *wink*
anecdotal evidence is irrelevant. look at the data because its been determined to be the most delicate and the most often broken phone.
The highlighted section is a statement I wonder about all the time. Aple needs competitors to keep innovating? Really? So when they jumped into the smartphone market segment all the other OEM were poised to leap ahead in design and function but Apple beat them to it? Not when you compare the Nokia N series, the Android pre-iPhone prototype, the BB Bolds/Curves/Tours, HTC's P, T or S series (pre Android), all of these and the rest were incrementalists not innovators. Apple stepped out in front of pretty much everyone, established the capacitive touch benchmark. Apple spent some time tightening up its own platform and when the time is right - they will do it again.
And again, the whole "tablet" thing. Netbooks. Who else is delivering innovation at the same rate Apple is - and I do mean deliver - not just "talk". So if Apple is characteristically out-innovating everyone else without there being significant competition - what good is there in saying that "competition is great"? Or is this yet another commerical truism that is used to justify mere incrementalism and "running in the pack"?
of course competition compels innovation. the dominant players before apple were fairly established in their product lineup. if apple hadn't differentiated itself to the amazing level that they did, then it would be a very different story for apple today. they blew everyone out of the water because of their innovation.
It's not clear, it depends on the methodology for the first number. I think it may be a survey of platforms by current phones in circulation and use. ie. Just because MS has 6% of the smartphones in use doesn't mean that they're selling 6% of phones now.
The wording was clearer on the NIelsen survey which almost exactly matched the numbers for Apple & Android with this graphic from an earlier article
The variance between RIM & MS in the two surveys is interesting.
Umm.. I don't get it.. Smartphone 55% of recent phone acquirer market (same as 3 months previous), Android is 27% of this (same as 3 months previous), iPhone(iOS) increases 7% to 17% in same 3 months. How is it that iPhones are now driving the market? Seems the 27% that Android represents still 'drives' the smartphone section of the market.
I think any survey between android and iPhone is usually unfair... When you talk about Android, youre talking about the hundreds of Android phones out there. When you talk about iPhones, especially the iPhone 4, you're talking about one model by one company. For more accurate survey, I believe one person already said this, the survey should be between iOS and Google Android, or iPhone 4 vs one Android phone. I believe iPhone is the most sold phone and that no other one Android model broke the record (this is to my knowledge; please correct me if I'm wrong.)
Yes, Apple products may be and most are expensive compared to it's competitors. But you should know, Apple product do last very long time as they are quality products. The sophistication and simplicity of Apple's design is really worth the price. This is my opinion, of course, and some others might dislike Apple's design theory, and that's perfectly fine. But to compare Android phones to iPhones, it has to be fair, model to model or OS to OS, not OS to one single phone.
Well, it depends on the topic of the survey.. I believe the survey in this thread is about Android OS and iPhone OS (I doubt they deliberately used only selected iPhone 4 numbers and excluded iPhone 3GS and it's still working predecessors). As the survey is about their relative growth, in this instance it is 'fair'. Comparing Apple's 'one model for all' approach to Android's 'choose the model that suits YOU' approach is like comparing Ford Motor's initial Model-T vs the selection that other car makers developed. They each work for their respective customers.
I agree you do pay for the infrastructure and service you get from Apple by buying their products, but I don't think I like how they come across as arrogant in the extreme in their responses to problems that crop up in their products. Bugs in iTunes, iPhone4 antennae and recent trojan to mention a few. I realize part of their marketing is their mystique of being safe from such problems, but saying 'don't do that' (to put it mildly) is just plain unhelpful.
If you are looking for comparisons of model to model, iPhone to a single Android phone, you have to look no further than a search using your selected iPhone model and the Android phone model as search terms in any search engine.
Skewed statistics. iOS is 1 phone (disregarding successive generations). Android is multiple phones (again disregarding successive generations). Take the largest selling Android phone compared to the iPhone and I think you'll find these statistics paint a much different picture. Not going to say one is better than the other. Competition is good for the consumer so both sides win in my opinion. In fact Apple themselves welcomed the competition from day one, openly. So why even bother trying to determine which is the better platform? If we truly succeed in accomplishing this and shutting out either OS, we will only be hurting ourselves.
Ah, but the numbers never really did point to the 'better' platform, just the more popular one. For one reason or another there are more Android subscribers each quarter than iPhone. It may be price, it may be features, heck it may even be because someone they know has one.
What I would like to see are numbers giving sales figures. I mean sales, not "sales" as in free with contract, or buy one get one. How many handsets were actually exchanged for cash in addition to a contract? The reason I ask is because two of my friends use Android smartphones ONLY because they came "free" with the contract.
Android is capturing so much of the market with handsets and little of app sales because most Android users don't want to pay for anything they don't have to. Neither of my friends leave on their 3G service because they chose the lowest data plan. They don't buy any apps either.
I can't see that the Android "giveaway" can be sustained. I'm probably wrong though.
Free with contract is good.. Mobile phone providers are concerned more with the long term contracts than the sale of the single device.. From the Provider's point of view I would bet the income gained from the larger number of Android long-term subscribers trump the income they get from the iPhone subscribers. And that's before any subscriber profit-sharing to Apple is taken out (assuming that practice still exists like it does today in Japan).
How do your friends make phone calls if they keep turning off their 3G service? If those free apps are doing what they want them to do, why argue about it? It sounds like you're disappointed someone isn't making money off your friends.
The Android 'giveaway' as you put it is easily sustainable.. The cost of the phone is recovered via the long-term subscription plan, Google gets no profit from the phone sales and very little from the app sales since a majority of the slice that comes out of the app dev's sales goes to the mobile phone providers. Google gets its profits from the users using their services (Google Voice, Google Maps, Google Search, etc.). Manufacturers don't give their phones away, they sell them to the providers. No one is losing money. It is just a different business model than Apple.
No, that was my point - the numbers I'm interested in haven't been released. I'd settle for which OEM has the largest consumer share of smartphones, but even for that I'd need to know what percent of Samsung/Moto/LGs handsets were smartphones
We do know that Apple, RIM and Palm only make smartphones, so we know their share of consumers are the same as platform share.
ie.
Apple - 26.6%
RIM - 24.7%
Palm - 2.4%
So there's 46.3% left to be divided up between Samsung/LG/Moto/HTC - we'll assume Symbian is at 0%.
If we ignore HTC & SE and assume that the other 3 have a roughly equal proportion of smartphones it would be
Samsung - 18.82%
Moto -11.5%
LG - 16%
In which case Apple is now the number one maker of smartphones in the US market. But that's based on a lot of supposition, and if it's the case why hasn't it been shouted out at any point by Apple PR?
It gets even more pronounced if we try to look at current sales instead of share existing handsets. There we know that Apple is up at more like 31% (from the Nielsen numbers).
I don't understand where the 31% comes from.. If you take the nielsen's report claim of 1% market share increase (26%(Feb-Apr) to 27% (Mar-May)) for iPhone and compare it to 2% market share increase (36%-38% (same period)) for Android smartphones, I would say that Android sold more phones 'currently'.. Since the market share increase is compared over a similar time period, it is reasonable to say that the share increase reflects a similar trend in recent sales.
If you don't mind please show what process lead you to your estimate of 31%.