Apple overtakes Samsung as top U.S. mobile phone vendor for first time in Q4 2012

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
A report published on Friday by market research firm Strategy Analytics said that Apple became the largest mobile phone vendor in the U.S. over the last quarter of 2012, surpassing Samsung in total units shipped for the first time in company history.

Vendor Estimates
Source: Strategy Analytics


The estimates from Strategy Analytics' Wireless Device Strategies service saw Apple ship 17.7 million units accounting for a record 34 percent of the market during the three months ending in December, enough to squeeze by Samsung's 32.3 percent share on 16.8 million shipments for the same period. In the fourth quarter of 2011, Apple was estimated to have shipped 12.8 million iPhones compared to Samsung's 13.5 million units.

Until quarter four, Samsung had been the prevailing U.S. market leader since 2008. It should be noted that the numbers account for both smartphones and so-called feature phones.

"Apple has become the number one mobile phone vendor by volume in the United States for the first time ever," said Strategy Analytics Executive Director Neil Mawston. "Apple?s success has been driven by its popular ecosystem of iPhones and App Store, generous carrier subsidies, and extensive marketing around the new iPhone 5 model."

Coming in behind Apple and Samsung was LG, which shipped 4.7 million mobile phones to capture a 9 percent share of the market, slightly down from 6.9 million units and a 14 percent share in 2011.

During Apple's quarterly conference call for the first quarter of 2013, it was revealed that iPhone sales stood at 47.8 million units worldwide, a 29 percent increase from the year ago quarter. Adding to the boosted sales was strong performance in the U.S., according to Apple's Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer, who noted that a number of government agencies, such as NASA, NOAA and the TSA, were issuing iPhones "by the thousands."

Overall, the research firm said customer demand for 4G smartphones and 3G feature phones spurred U.S. shipments to 52 million units, a 4 percent increase from last year's 50.2 million units. The strong performance in the holiday quarter wasn't enough to make up for nine months of market contraction, however, which resulted in an 11 percent decline from 186.8 million units in 2011 to 166.9 million units in 2012.
«13

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 53
    Apple overtakes Samsung as top U.S. mobile phone vendor for first time in Q4 2012??

    Soon there will be headline "this news shows Apple faces limited growth as it overtakes Samsung , APPLE DIVED 7% today!!!!!!!!!!!"
  • Reply 2 of 53
    Great, the stock is going to tank!
  • Reply 3 of 53
    ya sure, as if this weren't built news to make profits on the stock exchange, Apple stocks are low, because of the lack of innovation by Apple Inc lately. The world economics aren't very good in the strongest Apple Markets, Android is selling more, because the top android phones are faster and more powerful than iphone, and the medium and low market have several quite good android devices that does more than an iPhone for 4 times less in the price tag. Typical Apple didin't give dividends, that was the favorite strategy by Steve Jobs, if Apple was doing good in innovation, quality and sales, that would make stock value grow. Not whats happening today! Remember that stock markets is a game of true and false statements about a company, that will fool some and others will make profits on it!...
  • Reply 4 of 53
    jason98jason98 Posts: 768member
    saltwater wrote: »
    Android is selling more, because the top android phones are faster and more powerful than iphone...

    You forgot the sarcasm flag?
  • Reply 5 of 53


    But I thought Apple were doomed?

  • Reply 6 of 53
    matrix07matrix07 Posts: 1,993member


    Android is winning®.

  • Reply 7 of 53

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by jason98 View Post





    You forgot the sarcasm flag?


    Lets hope :)

  • Reply 8 of 53
    I'm afraid, SaltWater, that the current AAPL price has little to do with the realities of the company's performance, past or future. It has more to do with analysts and their "well, it is the largest company (last check, again more than ExxonMobil), and at the top, so nothing to do but go down. They made their money from AAPL, so on to the next big thing.

    (Sorry, couldn't resist)
  • Reply 9 of 53
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member


    Something that might be of some concern is the mention of smartphone market contraction. Note that the total market increased only 4% over the holiday period compared to the previous year, and was down over the entire year. That a big reason that Apple sees China as so important. The US isn't going to be the driver for big iPhone revenue gains anymore


     


    "Overall, the research firm said customer demand for 4G smartphones and 3G feature phones spurred U.S. shipments to 52 million units, a 4 percent increase from last year's 50.2 million units. The strong performance in the holiday quarter wasn't enough to make up for nine months of market contraction, however, which resulted in an 11 percent decline from 186.8 million units in 2011 to 166.9 million units in 2012."

  • Reply 10 of 53
    matrix07matrix07 Posts: 1,993member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Gatorguy View Post


    Something that might be of some concern is the mention of smartphone market contraction. Note that the total market increased only 4% over the holiday period compared to the previous year, and was down over the entire year. That a big reason that Apple sees China as so important. The US isn't going to be the driver for big iPhone revenue gains anymore


     


    "Overall, the research firm said customer demand for 4G smartphones and 3G feature phones spurred U.S. shipments to 52 million units, a 4 percent increase from last year's 50.2 million units. The strong performance in the holiday quarter wasn't enough to make up for nine months of market contraction, however, which resulted in an 11 percent decline from 186.8 million units in 2011 to 166.9 million units in 2012."



    It's time for iWatch.

  • Reply 11 of 53
    drblankdrblank Posts: 3,385member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SaltWater View Post



    ya sure, as if this weren't built news to make profits on the stock exchange, Apple stocks are low, because of the lack of innovation by Apple Inc lately. The world economics aren't very good in the strongest Apple Markets, Android is selling more, because the top android phones are faster and more powerful than iphone, and the medium and low market have several quite good android devices that does more than an iPhone for 4 times less in the price tag. Typical Apple didin't give dividends, that was the favorite strategy by Steve Jobs, if Apple was doing good in innovation, quality and sales, that would make stock value grow. Not whats happening today! Remember that stock markets is a game of true and false statements about a company, that will fool some and others will make profits on it!...


    You are kidding aren't you.


     


    You need to go to Geekbench and look at the comparison tests again.  Apple's A6 processor was the fastest rated smartphone chip.  They don't have to overclock their processors to gain performance like others might be doing.  Did you read about the S3 Sudden Death Syndrome?  Motherboards ceasing to work?  Sounds like the processors might be running just a little too hot.


     


    Apple pays dividends.


     


    Apple just released a bunch of products right before Christmas, and they could build the products fast enough so those sales that didn't ship last quarter will ship this quarter, giving Apple a head start on this quarter.  Apple doesn't roll out all of their products in all of their markets at the same time.  They can't.  They would be inundated with orders, plus some models have to go through their approval process.   Android is only selling the lower priced products which have no margin in these other countries.  Plus, Apple hasn't signed China Mobile yet. 


     


    Sounds like you haven't really analyzed the situation that carefully.  The analysts typically don't take everything into consideration because most of them don't spend much time investigating the company.  That's why I don't always listen to analysts.  Even before Jobs came back to Apple and the analysts were spouting doom and gloom for Apple, I was saying the opposite.  Look what happened.  Apple came from almost going out of business to becoming more valuable than Microsoft, HP, Dell, and a bunch of other companies COMBINED.




    Don't believe everything these anaylsts project.  Some of them are bitter because they were against Apple's growth, they didn't invest in Apple when they should have and many of them are just flat out don't know what they are talking about.  Most professional anaylists cover at least 20, many times 30 different stocks and they probably spend about 5 hours a week looking at Apple without asking the right questions, looking at all of the different factors, because they simply don't have the time to do a good job.


     


    People need to realize that Apple trading at a P/E of 9 or 10 is DIRT CHEAP, unless something major happened that's negative.  Nothing major has happened to them that's negative.  The stores are still selling Apple products.

  • Reply 12 of 53
    pendergastpendergast Posts: 1,358member
    saltwater wrote: »
    ya sure, as if this weren't built news to make profits on the stock exchange, Apple stocks are low, because of the lack of innovation by Apple Inc lately. The world economics aren't very good in the strongest Apple Markets, Android is selling more, because the top android phones are faster and more powerful than iphone, and the medium and low market have several quite good android devices that does more than an iPhone for 4 times less in the price tag. Typical Apple didin't give dividends, that was the favorite strategy by Steve Jobs, if Apple was doing good in innovation, quality and sales, that would make stock value grow. Not whats happening today! Remember that stock markets is a game of true and false statements about a company, that will fool some and others will make profits on it!...

    Purple pigeons.



    See, I can post nonsense too.
  • Reply 13 of 53

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SaltWater View Post



    ya sure, as if this weren't built news to make profits on the stock exchange, Apple stocks are low, because of the lack of innovation by Apple Inc lately. The world economics aren't very good in the strongest Apple Markets, Android is selling more, because the top android phones are faster and more powerful than iphone, and the medium and low market have several quite good android devices that does more than an iPhone for 4 times less in the price tag. Typical Apple didin't give dividends, that was the favorite strategy by Steve Jobs, if Apple was doing good in innovation, quality and sales, that would make stock value grow. Not whats happening today! Remember that stock markets is a game of true and false statements about a company, that will fool some and others will make profits on it!...


    Oh! Android is selling phones! Now that's big news! The first OS that is able to sell phones! This should be big headlines in all newspapers!

  • Reply 14 of 53
    drblankdrblank Posts: 3,385member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by starbird73 View Post



    I'm afraid, SaltWater, that the current AAPL price has little to do with the realities of the company's performance, past or future. It has more to do with analysts and their "well, it is the largest company (last check, again more than ExxonMobil), and at the top, so nothing to do but go down. They made their money from AAPL, so on to the next big thing.



    (Sorry, couldn't resist)


    It's all perception and what the investor's think is going to happen in the future with regards to sales growth.  I'm wondering what last quarter's sales would have been if they shipped everything that people had on order and had plenty of stock on hand of all of the products people were going to the stores looking to pick up?


     


    My guess, is they could have probably racked up another $10 to $20 BIllion in sales if they had the product readily in stock.  Plus, it took them a while to get the iPad minis with cellular approved and they didn't start selling in Asia until this month.


     


    Oh well, start this quarter with a lot of business in the queue.


     


    I remember a few months back that Foxconn is building more assembly plants, but those do take time to build.




    What people fail to realize is that we don't know what their daily production levels are and what their daily sales are for each product.   It would be interesting to have that data to analyze.

  • Reply 15 of 53
    drblankdrblank Posts: 3,385member


    Maybe Apple should start listing their book to bill ratios on their products.  I'm sure some of them are pretty high.

  • Reply 16 of 53
    drblankdrblank Posts: 3,385member


    What's funny is that the Android fans that like to mislead people don't look at Geekbench tests, they are too busy looking at the specs on these websites.  It's all they have.  They like comparing apple's to oranges, (pun is unavoidable).  

  • Reply 17 of 53


    All I have to say SaltWater is this.


     


    http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/02/01/apple-android-market-share/


     


    Note this trends people that actually use their devices instead of guessing some fictional Android shipping number:

  • Reply 18 of 53
    Garbage in, garbage out.
  • Reply 19 of 53
    anonymouseanonymouse Posts: 6,857member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Gatorguy View Post


    Something that might be of some concern is the mention of smartphone market contraction. Note that the total market increased only 4% over the holiday period compared to the previous year, and was down over the entire year. That a big reason that Apple sees China as so important. The US isn't going to be the driver for big iPhone revenue gains anymore


     


    "Overall, the research firm said customer demand for 4G smartphones and 3G feature phones spurred U.S. shipments to 52 million units, a 4 percent increase from last year's 50.2 million units. The strong performance in the holiday quarter wasn't enough to make up for nine months of market contraction, however, which resulted in an 11 percent decline from 186.8 million units in 2011 to 166.9 million units in 2012."



     


    Now you've taken to concern trolling? I though straightforward shilling suited you better.

  • Reply 20 of 53
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    gatorguy wrote: »
    Something that might be of some concern is the mention of smartphone market contraction. Note that the total market increased only 4% over the holiday period compared to the previous year, and was down over the entire year. That a big reason that Apple sees China as so important. The US isn't going to be the driver for big iPhone revenue gains anymore

    As usual, you're misreading the data so that you can say negative things about Apple.

    The data does not say that the smartphone market only grew by 4%. The data includes both smartphones AND feature phones (which Apple doesn't make). The total market declined for the year and only grew by 4% for the quarter, but it doesn't say how much of that was from smartphone and how much from feature phones. I am guessing that the number of smartphones grew faster than the number of feature phones.

    Of course, if that WAS the real smartphone number, then Apple's massive iPhone sales last quarter ought to be even bigger news.
Sign In or Register to comment.