Apple bursts past Nokia to become world's largest smartphone maker

Posted:
in iPhone edited January 2014
Just four years after releasing the iPhone, Apple has managed to pass Nokia and fend off a challenge from Samsung in the second quarter on its way to a new milestone as the world's No. 1 smartphone maker in terms of volume.



Strategy Analytics published its second quarter findings early Friday, declaring Apple the leader of the smartphone market with 18 percent market share. Global smartphone shipments grew 76 percent annually to reach 110 million units in the June quarter, the firm said.



Apple became the world's largest phone vendor in terms of revenue in the first quarter of this year, but this marks the first time that the iPhone maker has taken the top spot for units shipped.



Some analysts had predicted that Samsung would take the crown with Apple in second place, but, according to Friday's report, the Korean electronics giant sold 19.2 million smartphones in the second quarter, not enough to catch Apple.



Source: Strategy Analytics



Samsung's growth story was still an impressive success, as it sold just 3.1 million smartphones in the year ago quarter. "Samsung?s shipments grew a huge 520 percent annually, for 17 percent global smartphone market share. Samsung?s Galaxy portfolio has proven popular, especially the high-tier S2 Android model," said Strategy Analytics Director Neil Mawston.



Friday's numbers come on the heels of a report from IDC that found Apple had grown 141.8 percent year over year, more than 12 times the global market growth rate of 11.3 percent.



Apple stunned Wall Street when it released its quarterly results last week. The company revealed that it had sold 20.34 million iPhones and 9.25 million iPads in the June quarter.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 49
    aluopaluop Posts: 57member
    This should have happened way earlier considered that Nokia likes to put S60 in a dumb phone and calls it a smartphone, e.g. this no-3g, no-gps smartphone in 2010
  • Reply 2 of 49
    asciiascii Posts: 5,936member
    Good job Apple. But more than just getting to the top, they have changed the whole market. Every phone is an iPhone now.
  • Reply 3 of 49
    iqatedoiqatedo Posts: 1,822member
    Volume AND profit... but, but, but... Android is more popular!
  • Reply 4 of 49
    matrix07matrix07 Posts: 1,993member
    You have to give credit to Samsung though for such a growth. This quarter It might get past Apple when people are waiting for iPhone 5.
  • Reply 5 of 49
    jfanningjfanning Posts: 3,398member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ALUOp View Post


    This should have happened way earlier considered that Nokia likes to put S60 in a dumb phone and calls it a smartphone, e.g. this no-3g, no-gps smartphone in 2010



    So are you the one who defines what a smart phone is? That's right, you don't. Have you ever thought that model phone might have been for a market that didn't need either of those?
  • Reply 6 of 49
    I remember when Steve Jobs was on stage and getting excited about the prospect of getting just 1% of the market share of cell phones. I'd love to see the grin on his face when he saw this news.
  • Reply 7 of 49
    krabbelenkrabbelen Posts: 243member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jfanning View Post


    So are you the one who defines what a smart phone is? That's right, you don't. Have you ever thought that model phone might have been for a market that didn't need either of those?



    Whether it is for a market that doesn't need a certain feature is neither here nor there -- that just makes it "smartER" than other devices commonly used in those markets.



    Of course, there is no standard definition of "smartphone" that everyone agrees to, but 3G and GPS seem to be mentioned in most of the first dozen hits on the internet for "definition of smartphone".



    Location awareness is pretty basic now -- it is necessary for an awful lot of apps and online services to do what they do. And a camera is much more useful with location awareness to tag photos. How smart can a phone be, if it doesn't know where I am, or if it doesn't have the bandwidth of at least the iPhone 3G of 2+ years ago that everyone complained of until it got it way back then?



    Coming up with a sensible feature set is all part of making a modern smartphone that is successful. People trash Apple for leaving off things like full keyboards with wobbly plastic keys, or SD slots (although the iPhone already includes unprecedented 16GB min - 64GB!)...



    ...Yet, the things that truly make the phone "smart"? You say, "Hey, don't knock Nokia for calling their phone 'smart'; if they think it's 'smart', who are you to knock them?" On the contrary, jFanning, why knock ALUOp -- should you or Nokia be defining smartphones any more than he?



    This is like trying to define post-PC "Tablet PC's" vs "Media Tablets". People like to say iPads are merely media tablets. Yet, what are they "hired" to do (to use Horace Dediu's phrase)? ...Much smarter things than "Tablet PCs", for sure. If you hire a phone to do a smart job, such as making use of many of the usual apps and services, then bandwidth and location awareness is pretty basic and pretty much assumed -- more so than with a tablet, because a phone is at a higher level of mobility and will be taken with you everywhere you go.
  • Reply 8 of 49
    suzerainsuzerain Posts: 28member
    Frankly, Samsung's numbers are more impressive than Apple's...they went from 5% to 17.5% in one year...not too shabby.
  • Reply 9 of 49
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by suzerain View Post


    Frankly, Samsung's numbers are more impressive than Apple's...they went from 5% to 17.5% in one year...not too shabby.



    What was the sell thru? I say baloney.
  • Reply 10 of 49
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by suzerain View Post


    Frankly, Samsung's numbers are more impressive than Apple's...they went from 5% to 17.5% in one year...not too shabby.



    Samsung's numbers are impressive, but there are a couple of points here:



    1. Apple has just one phone on the market (or 2, if you count the 3GS and the 4 seperately). I wonder how many smartphone models Samsung has and how many were introduced over the course of the year when it's share went up to 17.5%.



    2. Apple has not yet launched a new phone, so we are talking of sales of a single model phone over a year. It has sold so well even a year after its release. And if you want to include the 3GS sales, we are talking about a phone that is over 2 years old that is still selling well.



    So while Samsung's growth is great, I think Apple's numbers are more impressive.
  • Reply 11 of 49
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ArchAngel21x View Post


    I remember when Steve Jobs was on stage and getting excited about the prospect of getting just 1% of the market share of cell phones. I'd love to see the grin on his face when he saw this news.



    +17 (percent market share):-)
  • Reply 12 of 49
    saareksaarek Posts: 1,520member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by fjose1929 View Post


    What was the sell thru? I say baloney.



    Samsung phones are highly popular, I'm sure that their sell through is pretty good.
  • Reply 13 of 49
    saareksaarek Posts: 1,520member
    Ignore
  • Reply 14 of 49
    in the other article two below this one, the numbers are different? The other one said something like 111 million smartphones by nokia or something close to that. I want to believe this one is the right one...but which one is the right one?
  • Reply 15 of 49
    cloudgazercloudgazer Posts: 2,161member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by suzerain View Post


    Frankly, Samsung's numbers are more impressive than Apple's...they went from 5% to 17.5% in one year...not too shabby.



    Yep, once they copied Apple they finally broke into the smartphone market
  • Reply 16 of 49
    cloudgazercloudgazer Posts: 2,161member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by pooman625 View Post


    in the other article two below this one, the numbers are different? The other one said something like 111 million smartphones by nokia or something close to that. I want to believe this one is the right one...but which one is the right one?



    This article is smartphones, the IDC survey is handsets - ie. smartphones+dumbphones. They are both right.
  • Reply 17 of 49
    stelligentstelligent Posts: 2,680member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by matrix07 View Post


    You have to give credit to Samsung though for such a growth.



    Agreed. It shows that customers are looking for quality amongst the myriad choices of Android phones. And if Mango takes off, Samsung might be able to ride it as a second coattail to put together a rather awesome total.
  • Reply 18 of 49
    suzerainsuzerain Posts: 28member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by BestKeptSecret View Post


    Samsung's numbers are impressive, but there are a couple of points here:



    1. Apple has just one phone on the market (or 2, if you count the 3GS and the 4 seperately). I wonder how many smartphone models Samsung has and how many were introduced over the course of the year when it's share went up to 17.5%.



    2. Apple has not yet launched a new phone, so we are talking of sales of a single model phone over a year. It has sold so well even a year after its release. And if you want to include the 3GS sales, we are talking about a phone that is over 2 years old that is still selling well.



    So while Samsung's growth is great, I think Apple's numbers are more impressive.



    Just for the sake of argument, why does that matter?



    Apple has only one phone model...but that's just Apple's choice (i.e., not Samsung's fault). Apple could have chosen, for example, to break the iPhone into three models...a high end, mid-range, and low-end, but they didn't. (Just like how Apple only has a few models of laptop, essentially, while some of their competitors have dozens. Does that somehow make laptop market share numbers invalid?)



    If the aim of the survey is to find out which manufacturer is selling the most smartphones, then seems to me this is valid.



    Perhaps if we compared so-called "premium" smartphones (if we could agree on a definition of such a thing), then Apple's market share would be higher.



    Anyway, apart from that, both Samsung and Apple are doing great, I'd say. RIM is screwed...Nokia might possibly rebound if Windows Phone 7 proves to be popular. Time will tell.



    On the operating system front, I'd expect iOS to have 40% or so of this market when all is said and done, once RIM is destroyed, and then it becomes a three-way death match between iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7. 2012/2013 will be fun times for us phone users.
  • Reply 19 of 49
    cloudgazercloudgazer Posts: 2,161member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by stelligent View Post


    Agreed. It shows that customers are looking for quality amongst the myriad choices of Android phones. And if Mango takes off, Samsung might be able to ride it as a second coattail to put together a rather awesome total.



    That's unlikely, because so much of Samsung's share gains in smartphones were at the expense of Nokia, and Nokia is of course going to be a huge Mango shop, with special treatment from MS so that it's WP7 offerings can have added passion fruit or somesuch.



    If anything WP7 being successful might reduce Samsung's share, and see Nokia move back up. Of course we'll probably never know, because WP7 is quite likely going to sink without trace and take Nokia with it.
  • Reply 20 of 49
    saareksaarek Posts: 1,520member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by cloudgazer View Post


    That's unlikely, because so much of Samsung's share gains in smartphones were at the expense of Nokia, and Nokia is of course going to be a huge Mango shop, with special treatment from MS so that it's WP7 offerings can have added passion fruit or somesuch.



    If anything WP7 being successful might reduce Samsung's share, and see Nokia move back up. Of course we'll probably never know, because WP7 is quite likely going to sink without trace and take Nokia with it.





    We don't know that yet, I've played with WP7 and it's not too shabby. Don't get me wrong, I have no intention of ditching my iPhone but WP7 is a good Android/iOS competitor that is only going to get stronger.



    I think it's fair to say that MS needed Nokia more than the other way around and that this is a strategic fail of epic proportions on Nokia's side when the new N9 & it's MeeGo OS are taken into consideration.
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