I'm sorry, but is the author of this article blind and unable to read his own charts? Looking at the VZW graph, it's clear that iPhone sales peaked in 2012 at 6 million and have been on a decline to 4 million in the most recent quarter.
As usual, the retarded Apple bashers are out in full force. Let me enlighten you on something called "context." The reason why iPhone sales peaked in the last quarter of 2012 and declined in the most recent quarter is that you're comparing to the holiday season. That is always the quarter when Apple sales are at their peak.
For a real comparison you need to look at year over year. Look again at that graph and compare Dec 2013 vs Dec 2012, and also Mar 2013 vs Mar 2012 and you'll see that iPhone sales trends are quite healthy. Meanwhile non-iPhone sales are flat across the board, if not declining.
I think it is to be expected that many people would make an android their first phone. To a lot of people, even a cheap one is a lot of money with data included, and they have to decide if it is worth it.
Once in, many get hooked and have little hesitation spending a lot more money when they ourgrow the phone. It makes sense that a significant percentage of those going high end will end up with an Apple. Even if it is only 25% that is millins of extra sales.
Android pushed massve adoption of smart phones and in doing so, in the long run, help sell apple phones as well as high end android phones. We can never take android out of the equation, but I doubt that Apple would be selling many more phones had android not come along. Filling that mid to low end range is good for all sellers of high end phones.
[quote]Google's platform is functioning like training wheels for the iPhone.[/quote]
Not quite, it's more like Android is teaching people to drive with square wheels and when the benefits of driving is well enough integrated they move on to Apple's 'round wheels' for a more holistic experience.
Look at Samsung's quarterly financials, and you will see that their revenue and profits are growing MUCH faster than Apple's. I assume this is due to their mobile phone business, since the other markets they are in are fairly mature.
I did look at Samsung's financials and neither did they outgrow Apple on revenues nor on profits. What happened last year is Samsung grew as fast as Apple for the first time in several years.
Nope, reaching a conclusion based on what is known.
i.e. Samsung claimed 100 million Galaxy S phones sold. Schmidt claims 1 Billion Android activations.
Therefore around 90% of Android activations are not Samsung high end smartphones.
Given Samsung's dominance not much of the remaining 90% are high end smartphones from other manufacturers.
That means that most Android phones are low to mid range.
Given Android manufacturers reticence in giving out break downs of precise numbers then that is all we have to go on.
You are distorting the figures a bit by presuming no other Android phone manufacturer has sold a single high-end phone, which isn't the case so it's more than 100 M Then you are ignoring the Samsung Note. In Nov 2012, Samsung announced they had sold 5 M note II's worldwide. The previous month the figure was 3 M. So if the sales of 2 M a month have continued, the sales of the Note II might be approaching 15 M by now. They sold 10 M of the original Note by Sep 2012.
The true figure for high end android phones is probably at least 15%.
Quote:
JK Shin recently told reporters that they expect the Galaxy Note II to sell two times the current model or simply around 20m units.
One needs to look more closely at how "smartphone" is defined. And, more to the point, how people are actually using their phones to accomplish a variety of tasks.
What has been happening is that the overall "smartphone" is growing significantly as "dumb" and "feature" phones are replaced with "smartphones". Apparently, according to various analysts, "smartphones" now comprise just north of ALL mobile phones and are rapidly going to subsume all mobile phones as all mobile phones soon become "smartphones" simply because technology and mobile OSs are advancing.
At the same time, one wonders if putting Android on a phone, any phone, makes it a "smartphone" by definition. That certainly seems to be the case. Most of the Android phones produced and sold in the world are not Samsung S3 equivalents, which, as we can see from real sales data, do quite poorly against the iPhone. It is only when the iPhone is compared to ALL "smartphones" from ALL manufacturers, on ALL carriers in ALL the world, that you can come to your conclusion that Apple's poor little iPhone is not doing so hot all on its lonesome. Now, Apple only ever sold "smartphones", so it didn't have a look in at more than half the market of all mobile phones. Plus, Apple is only available on at most half the carriers in the world, while Samsung is available on pretty much all carriers in the world (Nokia too). So, Apple has at least half the world's mobile subscriptions yet to address for the future! Great position to be in!
Therefore, even where Apple shows a "loss" or flatline in "smartphone" marketshare, it is actually holding its own or growing in userbase, because the "smartphone" market is growing in leaps and bounds -- regular mobile phones are being replaced by "smartphones". Having said that, a flat line on Android smartphones on Verizon and ATT is significant, because that is a closed market. We know how many phones they sold, we know how many subscribers they have, we know how many new subscribers they have, we know what phones they could have chosen. ATT and Verizon consistently sell more iPhones than all Android smartphones. End of story. But the whole world is not a closed market -- there are all kinds of issues regarding availability on carriers, there are infrastructure issues, economics, politics, etc. The iPhone has yet to be in a position to even begin to address half the world market. Whole countries aren't really markets we can make good comparisons about either, unless we have more detail -- we don't know if the iPhone can even address all of Germany, Italy, Spain, France, UK, etc. Is the iPhone available on all carriers and equally available as an option to all the citizens of those countries to the degree that an Android phone -- ANY Android phone -- is? I doubt it. So, what good are your charts at telling us what the ATT and Verizon charts can tell us about iPhone vs Android smartphone?
Apple is competing against non-consumption. It can go nowhere but up. Apple was not in the phone business, then in 2007 it was. It sells a couple models of a very particular phone: a smartphone for sure (in fact it redefined the category and established the benchmark). Samsung, like Nokia et al has long made all sorts of phones of every description (hundreds of them), and had long-term relationships with all the carriers. It has always sold millions of phones. So now its phones run Android instead of whatever they ran before. So? It is really competing with other similar OEMs (HTC, Nokia, LG, etc.) many of whom it has just about run out of business. The iPhone against "Android" is just not the real issue: EVERYTHING is Android... until a consumer tries an iPhone. But how is Android doing against Samsung where a real comparison can be made (like on a single carrier)? Pretty darn good.
In fact, when real life usages are examined (web surfing, buying, online apps and services, various kinds of computing tasks...), the iPhone is represented DISPROPORTIONATELY. Why? Maybe because people actually use the iPhone as a real "smartphone" but don't use their Android upgrade in those ways. Android is put on any and all kinds of phones now. It is the default OS, replacing the previous generation of default mobile OS. This is just what all phone manufacturers have been putting on all their phones, regardless. So, of course the segment of ALL mobile phones represented by "smartphones" was bound to explode. By definition. Yes, that is down to Android. Whoopee! A lot of these billions of Android activations are on basic phones that, yes, can email and surf, if you really want to -- but apparently their owners don't use them for that... because, apparently, they are practically UNunsable for that. Or the owner just picked up whatever phone upgrade the salesman pushed on him, and that happened to run a version of Android (probably a three year-old version, never to be upgraded).
Clearly, the iPhone is doing better than any other single phone -- probably better than the next 5 "smartphones" that can really be compared with it in terms of capability and every day real-life use cases that people choose them for. So, as the "smartphone" market inevitably grows to take over all mobile phones and people expect more of their phone, the potential market for iPhone only grows and grows. Android is already in there, and no-one really cares -- sometimes it provides capability and utility to the phone owner, sometimes it doesn't, depends on the phone, the Android version, the person and their expectations, etc. But at least we won't have to differentiate between the "smartphone" market and the rest of the mobile phone market much longer -- it'll just be one huge pile of global mobile subscriptions numbering in the billions, with the potential of one or more for every person on earth. If Apple gets 20% of that against EVERYONE else, whatever the mix of OSs, it will be doing phenomenally well! Jobs was shooting for 1%.
From my POV, I had my iPhone back in 2008 (3G launch day in UK). Of course, over the years it became unbearably slow and then the battery eventually packed in late 2012, so I got a good four years out of it.
Problem was, I just could not afford another iPhone so I had to opt for an Android handset going on the cheap (a Sony Ericsson Xperia Play). Absolutely dreadful phone and absolutely dreadful OS. I don't understand why people want Android devices, other than lower overall cost of ownership. Reminds me of Windows 9x days. Even classic Mac OS was better than Win9x, but everyone flooded to the shittier (albeit cheaper) OS.
I really do hope Apple build a 'cheaper' handset. I don't want to use the latest and greatest apps, but I do want a device that I can trust, and I think Google are probably worse than Microsoft were in the nineties, early millennium.
Limited information. Sales at AT&T and Verizon are not total sales. The better data would be activations and usage data, which I'm certain both providers have readily on hand.
I'm sorry, but is the author of this article blind and unable to read his own charts? Looking at the VZW graph, it's clear that iPhone sales peaked in 2012 at 6 million and have been on a decline to 4 million in the most recent quarter.
No, but I suggest you may be. I see the valley of the slowest AT&T iPhone quarter this year being higher than the peak of the year before's -- a huge leap which shows tremendous growth. The trend line among the seasonal peaks and among the seasonal lows show continued growth, while the Android data show no cyclical swings and no sign of growth. Get a clue.
One needs to look more closely at how "smartphone" is defined. And, more to the point, how people are actually using their phones to accomplish a variety of tasks.
What has been happening is that the overall "smartphone" is growing significantly as "dumb" and "feature" phones are replaced with "smartphones". Apparently, according to various analysts, "smartphones" now comprise just north of ALL mobile phones and are rapidly going to subsume all mobile phones as all mobile phones soon become "smartphones" simply because technology and mobile OSs are advancing.
At the same time, one wonders if putting Android on a phone, any phone, makes it a "smartphone" by definition. That certainly seems to be the case. Most of the Android phones produced and sold in the world are not Samsung S3 equivalents, which, as we can see from real sales data, do quite poorly against the iPhone. It is only when the iPhone is compared to ALL "smartphones" from ALL manufacturers, on ALL carriers in ALL the world, that you can come to your conclusion that Apple's poor little iPhone is not doing so hot all on its lonesome. Now, Apple only ever sold "smartphones", so it didn't have a look in at more than half the market of all mobile phones. Plus, Apple is only available on at most half the carriers in the world, while Samsung is available on pretty much all carriers in the world (Nokia too). So, Apple has at least half the world's mobile subscriptions yet to address for the future! Great position to be in!
Therefore, even where Apple shows a "loss" or flatline in "smartphone" marketshare, it is actually holding its own or growing in userbase, because the "smartphone" market is growing in leaps and bounds -- regular mobile phones are being replaced by "smartphones". Having said that, a flat line on Android smartphones on Verizon and ATT is significant, because that is a closed market. We know how many phones they sold, we know how many subscribers they have, we know how many new subscribers they have, we know what phones they could have chosen. ATT and Verizon consistently sell more iPhones than all Android smartphones. End of story. But the whole world is not a closed market -- there are all kinds of issues regarding availability on carriers, there are infrastructure issues, economics, politics, etc. The iPhone has yet to be in a position to even begin to address half the world market. Whole countries aren't really markets we can make good comparisons about either, unless we have more detail -- we don't know if the iPhone can even address all of Germany, Italy, Spain, France, UK, etc. Is the iPhone available on all carriers and equally available as an option to all the citizens of those countries to the degree that an Android phone -- ANY Android phone -- is? I doubt it. So, what good are your charts at telling us what the ATT and Verizon charts can tell us about iPhone vs Android smartphone?
Apple is competing against non-consumption. It can go nowhere but up. Apple was not in the phone business, then in 2007 it was. It sells a couple models of a very particular phone: a smartphone for sure (in fact it redefined the category and established the benchmark). Samsung, like Nokia et al has long made all sorts of phones of every description (hundreds of them), and had long-term relationships with all the carriers. It has always sold millions of phones. So now its phones run Android instead of whatever they ran before. So? It is really competing with other similar OEMs (HTC, Nokia, LG, etc.) many of whom it has just about run out of business. The iPhone against "Android" is just not the real issue: EVERYTHING is Android... until a consumer tries an iPhone. But how is Android doing against Samsung where a real comparison can be made (like on a single carrier)? Pretty darn good.
In fact, when real life usages are examined (web surfing, buying, online apps and services, various kinds of computing tasks...), the iPhone is represented DISPROPORTIONATELY. Why? Maybe because people actually use the iPhone as a real "smartphone" but don't use their Android upgrade in those ways. Android is put on any and all kinds of phones now. It is the default OS, replacing the previous generation of default mobile OS. This is just what all phone manufacturers have been putting on all their phones, regardless. So, of course the segment of ALL mobile phones represented by "smartphones" was bound to explode. By definition. Yes, that is down to Android. Whoopee! A lot of these billions of Android activations are on basic phones that, yes, can email and surf, if you really want to -- but apparently their owners don't use them for that... because, apparently, they are practically UNunsable for that. Or the owner just picked up whatever phone upgrade the salesman pushed on him, and that happened to run a version of Android (probably a three year-old version, never to be upgraded).
Clearly, the iPhone is doing better than any other single phone -- probably better than the next 5 "smartphones" that can really be compared with it in terms of capability and every day real-life use cases that people choose them for. So, as the "smartphone" market inevitably grows to take over all mobile phones and people expect more of their phone, the potential market for iPhone only grows and grows. Android is already in there, and no-one really cares -- sometimes it provides capability and utility to the phone owner, sometimes it doesn't, depends on the phone, the Android version, the person and their expectations, etc. But at least we won't have to differentiate between the "smartphone" market and the rest of the mobile phone market much longer -- it'll just be one huge pile of global mobile subscriptions numbering in the billions, with the potential of one or more for every person on earth. If Apple gets 20% of that against EVERYONE else, whatever the mix of OSs, it will be doing phenomenally well! Jobs was shooting for 1%.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by AZREOSpecialist
I'm sorry, but is the author of this article blind and unable to read his own charts? Looking at the VZW graph, it's clear that iPhone sales peaked in 2012 at 6 million and have been on a decline to 4 million in the most recent quarter.
As usual, the retarded Apple bashers are out in full force. Let me enlighten you on something called "context." The reason why iPhone sales peaked in the last quarter of 2012 and declined in the most recent quarter is that you're comparing to the holiday season. That is always the quarter when Apple sales are at their peak.
For a real comparison you need to look at year over year. Look again at that graph and compare Dec 2013 vs Dec 2012, and also Mar 2013 vs Mar 2012 and you'll see that iPhone sales trends are quite healthy. Meanwhile non-iPhone sales are flat across the board, if not declining.
Once in, many get hooked and have little hesitation spending a lot more money when they ourgrow the phone. It makes sense that a significant percentage of those going high end will end up with an Apple. Even if it is only 25% that is millins of extra sales.
Android pushed massve adoption of smart phones and in doing so, in the long run, help sell apple phones as well as high end android phones. We can never take android out of the equation, but I doubt that Apple would be selling many more phones had android not come along. Filling that mid to low end range is good for all sellers of high end phones.
Not quite, it's more like Android is teaching people to drive with square wheels and when the benefits of driving is well enough integrated they move on to Apple's 'round wheels' for a more holistic experience.
Quote:
Originally Posted by igriv
Look at Samsung's quarterly financials, and you will see that their revenue and profits are growing MUCH faster than Apple's. I assume this is due to their mobile phone business, since the other markets they are in are fairly mature.
I did look at Samsung's financials and neither did they outgrow Apple on revenues nor on profits. What happened last year is Samsung grew as fast as Apple for the first time in several years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hill60
Nope, reaching a conclusion based on what is known.
i.e. Samsung claimed 100 million Galaxy S phones sold. Schmidt claims 1 Billion Android activations.
Therefore around 90% of Android activations are not Samsung high end smartphones.
Given Samsung's dominance not much of the remaining 90% are high end smartphones from other manufacturers.
That means that most Android phones are low to mid range.
Given Android manufacturers reticence in giving out break downs of precise numbers then that is all we have to go on.
You are distorting the figures a bit by presuming no other Android phone manufacturer has sold a single high-end phone, which isn't the case so it's more than 100 M Then you are ignoring the Samsung Note. In Nov 2012, Samsung announced they had sold 5 M note II's worldwide. The previous month the figure was 3 M. So if the sales of 2 M a month have continued, the sales of the Note II might be approaching 15 M by now. They sold 10 M of the original Note by Sep 2012.
The true figure for high end android phones is probably at least 15%.
Quote:
JK Shin recently told reporters that they expect the Galaxy Note II to sell two times the current model or simply around 20m units.
http://sammyhub.com/2012/09/12/samsung-expects-galaxy-note-ii-sales-to-cross-20-million-units/
http://currenteditorials.com/2012/11/25/samsung-announces-galaxy-note-ii-sales-figures-over-five-million-phones-sold/
Quote:
Originally Posted by cnocbui
That appears to not be the case.
http://www.tech-thoughts.net/2012/07/global-smartphone-market-share-trends.html
One needs to look more closely at how "smartphone" is defined. And, more to the point, how people are actually using their phones to accomplish a variety of tasks.
What has been happening is that the overall "smartphone" is growing significantly as "dumb" and "feature" phones are replaced with "smartphones". Apparently, according to various analysts, "smartphones" now comprise just north of ALL mobile phones and are rapidly going to subsume all mobile phones as all mobile phones soon become "smartphones" simply because technology and mobile OSs are advancing.
At the same time, one wonders if putting Android on a phone, any phone, makes it a "smartphone" by definition. That certainly seems to be the case. Most of the Android phones produced and sold in the world are not Samsung S3 equivalents, which, as we can see from real sales data, do quite poorly against the iPhone. It is only when the iPhone is compared to ALL "smartphones" from ALL manufacturers, on ALL carriers in ALL the world, that you can come to your conclusion that Apple's poor little iPhone is not doing so hot all on its lonesome. Now, Apple only ever sold "smartphones", so it didn't have a look in at more than half the market of all mobile phones. Plus, Apple is only available on at most half the carriers in the world, while Samsung is available on pretty much all carriers in the world (Nokia too). So, Apple has at least half the world's mobile subscriptions yet to address for the future! Great position to be in!
Therefore, even where Apple shows a "loss" or flatline in "smartphone" marketshare, it is actually holding its own or growing in userbase, because the "smartphone" market is growing in leaps and bounds -- regular mobile phones are being replaced by "smartphones". Having said that, a flat line on Android smartphones on Verizon and ATT is significant, because that is a closed market. We know how many phones they sold, we know how many subscribers they have, we know how many new subscribers they have, we know what phones they could have chosen. ATT and Verizon consistently sell more iPhones than all Android smartphones. End of story. But the whole world is not a closed market -- there are all kinds of issues regarding availability on carriers, there are infrastructure issues, economics, politics, etc. The iPhone has yet to be in a position to even begin to address half the world market. Whole countries aren't really markets we can make good comparisons about either, unless we have more detail -- we don't know if the iPhone can even address all of Germany, Italy, Spain, France, UK, etc. Is the iPhone available on all carriers and equally available as an option to all the citizens of those countries to the degree that an Android phone -- ANY Android phone -- is? I doubt it. So, what good are your charts at telling us what the ATT and Verizon charts can tell us about iPhone vs Android smartphone?
Apple is competing against non-consumption. It can go nowhere but up. Apple was not in the phone business, then in 2007 it was. It sells a couple models of a very particular phone: a smartphone for sure (in fact it redefined the category and established the benchmark). Samsung, like Nokia et al has long made all sorts of phones of every description (hundreds of them), and had long-term relationships with all the carriers. It has always sold millions of phones. So now its phones run Android instead of whatever they ran before. So? It is really competing with other similar OEMs (HTC, Nokia, LG, etc.) many of whom it has just about run out of business. The iPhone against "Android" is just not the real issue: EVERYTHING is Android... until a consumer tries an iPhone. But how is Android doing against Samsung where a real comparison can be made (like on a single carrier)? Pretty darn good.
In fact, when real life usages are examined (web surfing, buying, online apps and services, various kinds of computing tasks...), the iPhone is represented DISPROPORTIONATELY. Why? Maybe because people actually use the iPhone as a real "smartphone" but don't use their Android upgrade in those ways. Android is put on any and all kinds of phones now. It is the default OS, replacing the previous generation of default mobile OS. This is just what all phone manufacturers have been putting on all their phones, regardless. So, of course the segment of ALL mobile phones represented by "smartphones" was bound to explode. By definition. Yes, that is down to Android. Whoopee! A lot of these billions of Android activations are on basic phones that, yes, can email and surf, if you really want to -- but apparently their owners don't use them for that... because, apparently, they are practically UNunsable for that. Or the owner just picked up whatever phone upgrade the salesman pushed on him, and that happened to run a version of Android (probably a three year-old version, never to be upgraded).
Clearly, the iPhone is doing better than any other single phone -- probably better than the next 5 "smartphones" that can really be compared with it in terms of capability and every day real-life use cases that people choose them for. So, as the "smartphone" market inevitably grows to take over all mobile phones and people expect more of their phone, the potential market for iPhone only grows and grows. Android is already in there, and no-one really cares -- sometimes it provides capability and utility to the phone owner, sometimes it doesn't, depends on the phone, the Android version, the person and their expectations, etc. But at least we won't have to differentiate between the "smartphone" market and the rest of the mobile phone market much longer -- it'll just be one huge pile of global mobile subscriptions numbering in the billions, with the potential of one or more for every person on earth. If Apple gets 20% of that against EVERYONE else, whatever the mix of OSs, it will be doing phenomenally well! Jobs was shooting for 1%.
Problem was, I just could not afford another iPhone so I had to opt for an Android handset going on the cheap (a Sony Ericsson Xperia Play). Absolutely dreadful phone and absolutely dreadful OS. I don't understand why people want Android devices, other than lower overall cost of ownership. Reminds me of Windows 9x days. Even classic Mac OS was better than Win9x, but everyone flooded to the shittier (albeit cheaper) OS.
I really do hope Apple build a 'cheaper' handset. I don't want to use the latest and greatest apps, but I do want a device that I can trust, and I think Google are probably worse than Microsoft were in the nineties, early millennium.
There is nothing in the piece worth repeating.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AZREOSpecialist
I'm sorry, but is the author of this article blind and unable to read his own charts? Looking at the VZW graph, it's clear that iPhone sales peaked in 2012 at 6 million and have been on a decline to 4 million in the most recent quarter.
No, but I suggest you may be. I see the valley of the slowest AT&T iPhone quarter this year being higher than the peak of the year before's -- a huge leap which shows tremendous growth. The trend line among the seasonal peaks and among the seasonal lows show continued growth, while the Android data show no cyclical swings and no sign of growth. Get a clue.
So the numbers are there¿
As usual, great post. Thanks for writing it up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cnocbui
You are distorting the figures a bit...
Which was why I used "around".