iPhone gains US platform share at expense of Android, Windows, BlackBerry

2

Comments

  • Reply 21 of 46
    jfanningjfanning Posts: 3,398member
    This article is about US market share... so we can only assume he was talking about the US.

    I'm pretty sure Blackberry/RIM was the #1 smartphone maker in the United States in 2007.

    The worldwide title went to Nokia/Symbian.

    Are you sure about that, I had read that Microsoft was above Blackberry (BB was above worldwide), I think they went ahead of MS in 2008
  • Reply 22 of 46
    jfanning wrote: »
    Are you sure about that, I had read that Microsoft was above Blackberry (BB was above worldwide), I think they went ahead of MS in 2008

    Hmmmm.... It's difficult to find US smartphone numbers at that time... as most reports only list worldwide numbers.

    I've seen some reports saying RIM was ahead of Microsoft in the US at different times in 2007... and others that say Microsoft was ahead of RIM.

    So they must have been relatively close depending on who was counting.

    You're right though... RIM really took off in the US in 2008. That's when the Blackberry Curve was getting popular. It seems like everybody had one of those!

    I think Windows Mobile was mainly for enterprise customers... but the Blackberry exploded in the consumer market.
  • Reply 23 of 46
    frantisekfrantisek Posts: 756member
    Author should not get any salary for such article without table or graph. Copy paste can do monkey.
  • Reply 24 of 46
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    solipsismy wrote: »
    If we're talking HW, then the iPhone at 8% would probably still lead on profits due to their higher efficiency and mindshare, which I'd argue is a huge reason why they were able to include that market share as a result. It certainly wasn't from cutting corners and ignoring adware to their devices. If we're talking the OS, why is 8% such a horrible thing? The Mac is the most profitable PC vendor in the world, Mac OS X is the best consumer OS, and there are more than enough apps, and more and more users every day. There aren't many traditional PC vendors that are increasing their numbers these days and they started doing, but i'm getting off topic here…

    They said that profit share is more important than an isolated account of marketshare, you then invent a scenario with Apple at an 8% market share, which you end with a question about their profit made on 8%. How is that reasonable? Clearly their comment implies that the profit share would have market share with it as it's not reasonable to assume they are making significant, industry-leading profits with an insufficient market share.

    So how does marketshare without profit help Apple? Do you really think there would be no developers if the iPhone only had 8%? What percent of the handset market did they have in 2008 when they launched the App Store? Wasn't it about 1%? That makes me think that Apple was making significant profits in the industry, that they had considerable mindshare, that the developer tools, iOS and App Store offered considerable advantages and opportunities that other platforms did not have… which all lead to their current, near profit monopoly of the handset industry.

    When Apple was having major problems from the end of 1995 through about 2003, software for the Mac had receded significantly. I remember that very well. When adobe needed to move to Windows because it looked that Apple might not be around in the late 1990's, the situation because worse. They ended up porting Photoshop and the rest of their software back to the Mac, using a Windows development platform. It didn't work as well, and they stopped supporting Mac specific features. It became a real problem. The same thing happened at many vendors.

    But after the iPod and iMac, when Apple was on the mend, and marketshare was moving up again, vendors began to come back. But even now, there's a lot more software for Windows than the Mac.

    And you really need to stop talking about marketshare and no profits. I'm not talking about no profits, and you know that, as I've said it several times.

    Developers, believe it or not, also want to make a profit. It costs the same to develop for a small customer base, than for a large customer base. The same for marketing costs, and almost as much for support costs. So the smaller the marketshare, the lesser chance of them making a profit, or a good one. Why do you think that Win Phone isn't getting much good developer support? They don't see the point to it.

    So my question was what marketshare number would you think was ok. If you don't consider the entire ecosystem, they you aren't saying anything useful. The reason why Apple can afford to give so much goog software away is because of the large sales in smartphones and tablets they have. These very large profits, from very large sales, pays for that. As it does for their cloud initiatives, most of which are also free.

    If their sales, and by extension, marketshare was much smaller, the development money for all of that would also be fractional. You're not considering any of that.
  • Reply 25 of 46
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Hmmmm.... It's difficult to find US smartphone numbers at that time... as most reports only list worldwide numbers.

    I've seen some reports saying RIM was ahead of Microsoft in the US at different times in 2007... and others that say Microsoft was ahead of RIM.

    So they must have been relatively close depending on who was counting.

    You're right though... RIM really took off in the US in 2008. That's when the Blackberry Curve was getting popular. It seems like everybody had one of those!

    I think Windows Mobile was mainly for enterprise customers... but the Blackberry exploded in the consumer market.

    The Blackberry never exploded in the consumer market. Well, not until 2010, for a short while. Then it all collapsed.
  • Reply 26 of 46
    melgross wrote: »
    The Blackberry never exploded in the consumer market.

    There was a time when nearly everyone I came in contact with had a Blackberry. Teens, college kids, parents... it didn't matter. If they had a smartphone... it was a Blackberry. Or they had a flip-phone.

    Yeah it was short lived... but it definitely happened.

    I had 70+ people on my BBM buddy list. Blackberry was popular with consumers as well as the enterprise.

    melgross wrote: »
    Well, not until 2010, for a short while. Then it all collapsed.

    That's exactly when it happened. :)

    Here's a picture I took with a group of friends in 2010. Regular consumers... not enterprise customers:

    700

    Blackberry was everywhere... then it was nowhere :D

    .
  • Reply 27 of 46
    radarthekatradarthekat Posts: 3,842moderator
    melgross wrote: »


    So you guys think it's meaningless, do you? So, if Apple instead had a 3% marketshare here, and Win Phone had a 43.5% marketshare instead, then it would be ok with you? Then Apple would be selling about 8% of the phones they're selling now. And you guys really think that even if Apple were making a profit there, it would be fine?

    You do understand that there would be almost no developers, just as we see with Win Phone. And it would be very unlikely that Apple would be making a profit.

    So you really need to define your terms here, and understand what this all means.

    First, you need to go back and read my comment, which is a general comment about market share, not about US market share but about market share, which would mean the entire market for smartphones. Then you need to think about Ferrari or Porsche in the automotive market or, say, Coach in the women's handbag market. I'll bet that Coach has less than 1% market hate of the global market for women's handbags. Just imaging all the handbags sold for $20 at KMart, Sears, and flee markets around the world. But that huge market share of all those cheap functional handbags is meaningless to Coach's future prospects. Now, go back once more and read carefully what I wrote. It's meaningless UNLESS IT CONFERS SOME ADVANTAGES. Then come back and tell us, point by point against the points I made, where Apple has lost any one of the four advantages it has even without majority market share.
  • Reply 28 of 46
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    There was a time when nearly everyone I came in contact with had a Blackberry. Teens, college kids, parents... it didn't matter. If they had a smartphone... it was a Blackberry. Or they had a flip-phone.

    Yeah it was short lived... but it definitely happened.

    I had 70+ people on my BBM buddy list. Blackberry was popular with consumers as well as the enterprise.
    That's exactly when it happened. :)

    Here's a picture I took with a group of friends in 2010. Regular consumers... not enterprise customers:

    700

    Blackberry was everywhere... then it was nowhere :D

    .

    Even in 2010, I remember very few people out of business having Blackberry. A few people thought it was cool to have people think it was for business, and so bought one, but as a percentage? Not really. Blackberry was always primarily a business phone.

    I keep telling people to read the book "Losing The Signal", which is a great history about RIM, and later, Blackberry. In it, you can read their frustration about not cracking the consumer market. They just began to move in that direction, when the phone that was supposed to accomplish that, the Storm, instead destroyed the company.
  • Reply 29 of 46
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    First, you need to go back and read my comment, which is a general comment about market share, not about US market share but about market share, which would mean the entire market for smartphones. Then you need to think about Ferrari or Porsche in the automotive market or, say, Coach in the women's handbag market. I'll bet that Coach has less than 1% market hate of the global market for women's handbags. Just imaging all the handbags sold for $20 at KMart, Sears, and flee markets around the world. But that huge market share of all those cheap functional handbags is meaningless to Coach's future prospects. Now, go back once more and read carefully what I wrote. It's meaningless UNLESS IT CONFERS SOME ADVANTAGES. Then come back and tell us, point by point against the points I made, where Apple has lost any one of the four advantages it has even without majority market share.

    You guys need to stop comparing the computer industry with industries that have nothing to do with it in any way. As far as Ferrari or Porsche are concerned, as long as they can travel on the same roads as everyone else, and use the same fuel, little else matters. With handbag manufacturers such as Coach, which, by the way isn't doing too well, it matters even less. It's just a bag!

    But computers are completely different. If they don't run the software that people want, and need, people don't buy them. And Apple's products aren't luxury products. Some may be priced as much as 20% more than competitor's products, but that's nothing. And the rest are priced about the same. Apple's products are called "affordable luxury" products because of that. And that's really just because Apple doesn't make cheap products, so their lines SEEM more expensive.

    And no one is talking about majority marketshare. That's something you just put in there yourself, to change your argument. I asked you guys what marketshare for Apple's products you would think is ok, on the lowest end. None of you are secure enough to answer that question. Instead you're throwing totally irrelevant information out here.

    And really, comparing a $200 handbag to a $20 handbag is about as silly an argument as I can think of when talking about Apple's products vs their competitors.

    I guess you really don't have a rational argument after all, which is why you resort to this junk.
  • Reply 30 of 46
    melgross wrote: »
    Even in 2010, I remember very few people out of business having Blackberry. A few people thought it was cool to have people think it was for business, and so bought one, but as a percentage? Not really. Blackberry was always primarily a business phone.

    I keep telling people to read the book "Losing The Signal", which is a great history about RIM, and later, Blackberry. In it, you can read their frustration about not cracking the consumer market. They just began to move in that direction, when the phone that was supposed to accomplish that, the Storm, instead destroyed the company.

    I dunno man... I was surrounded by Blackberries. I live in the southeastern US... North Carolina. Perhaps that was a hotbed of Blackberry use?

    That picture was from a group of my friends in their 20s and 30s that all happened to be in the same room. But even when I would travel... if someone had a smartphone it was a Blackberry.

    Some background: I teach dance... so I'm in dance studios with tons of people. And I travel to dance competitions... so I see people from different states too.

    And these were people who used a Blackberry for personal use... not business. Moms and dads, and teens too.

    BTW... the Blackberry Storm came out in 2008. I only knew a couple people who bought one. But as indicated by that picture... my friends were using Curves and Bolds in 2010. We skipped the Storm because it was trash. Back then... people had a keyboard fetish :)
  • Reply 31 of 46
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    I dunno man... I was surrounded by Blackberries. I live in the southeastern US... North Carolina. Perhaps that was a hotbed of Blackberry use?
    Same here. Everyone I knew used a Blackberry or a flip-phone. Mostly Blackberry Curves/Pearls just before the iPhone got hot. TBH the Curve was a fine phone, and the holster with the mag clasp it came with was my favorite of all time.

    I did come across a list circa 2007 listing the top-selling phones that Spring, just about the time the iPhone first hit the stores.

    1. Motorola RAZR (all colors)
    2. BlackBerry Pearl (all colors)
    3. LG Chocolate (all colors)
    4. Samsung A900M
    5. Motorola i850
    6. Motorola Buzz ic502
    7. Sanyo Katana (all colors)
    8. Sony Ericsson w810i
    9. Nokia 5300 XpressMusic
    10. Motorola v325i

    Blast from the past huh?
  • Reply 32 of 46
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    I dunno man... I was surrounded by Blackberries. I live in the southeastern US... North Carolina. Perhaps that was a hotbed of Blackberry use?

    That picture was from a group of my friends in their 20s and 30s that all happened to be in the same room. But even when I would travel... if someone had a smartphone it was a Blackberry.

    Some background: I teach dance... so I'm in dance studios with tons of people. And I travel to dance competitions... so I see people from different states too.

    And these were people who used a Blackberry for personal use... not business. Moms and dads, and teens too.

    BTW... the Blackberry Storm came out in 2008. I only knew a couple people who bought one. But as indicated by that picture... my friends were using Curves and Bolds in 2010. We skipped the Storm because it was trash. Back then... people had a keyboard fetish :)

    It came out in November 2008, but didn't reach the market in numbers until sometime in December, so it was really a 2009 phone. As I said, until 2010, the Blackberry had no real consumer sales. They peaked in 2010, and then dropped rapidly. So I suppose, for a few months, there could have been a fair number around in areas. Never saw much of them here in NYC though for non business use. Maybe elsewhere, it became a brief status symbol.
  • Reply 33 of 46
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    The Wiki has this interesting comparison of phone sales from the beginning. One it total phones sold in models until that year, then below are numbers for manufacturers for a particular year. These are worldwide numbers.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_phones#2010

    This is also interesting.

    http://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held-by-smartphone-platforms-in-the-united-states/

    And this is very interesting. Where is Blackberry?

    http://www.infoplease.com/science/computers/top-ten-cellphones-2010.html
  • Reply 34 of 46
    melgross wrote: »
    It came out in November 2008, but didn't reach the market in numbers until sometime in December, so it was really a 2009 phone. As I said, until 2010, the Blackberry had no real consumer sales. They peaked in 2010, and then dropped rapidly. So I suppose, for a few months, there could have been a fair number around in areas. Never saw much of them here in NYC though for non business use. Maybe elsewhere, it became a brief status symbol.

    melgross wrote: »
    The Wiki has this interesting comparison of phone sales from the beginning. One it total phones sold in models until that year, then below are numbers for manufacturers for a particular year. These are worldwide numbers.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_phones#2010

    This is also interesting.

    http://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held-by-smartphone-platforms-in-the-united-states/

    And this is very interesting. Where is Blackberry?

    http://www.infoplease.com/science/computers/top-ten-cellphones-2010.html

    I know what I saw. :D

    I had a Blackberry from 2009-2011. Most people I knew had a Blackberry. We all used BBM for messaging. It wasn't just one or two people... I had over 70 people on my BBM list.

    And these were all regular consumers... not enterprise customers.

    If someone had a smartphone... it was a Blackberry. Not a Palm phone... not Windows Mobile.

    And let's not forget that most people bought phones on 2-year contracts. If they bought a Blackberry in 2010... they would keep it until 2012.

    Then they got an iPhone ;)

    That's one thing I did notice: many people had a Blackberry... but they never bought another Blackberry. They went from a flip-phone to a Blackberry... and by the time their Blackberry contract ended it was time to try another platform.

    So yes... the Blackberry's consumer success was short-lived... but it definitely happened. I lived it... and I was not alone.

    ComScore reported that Blackberry had over 40% subscriber-share in the US in late 2009 to early 2010... which is exactly the time I'm talking about.

    Of course it dropped off rapidly when Android became popular and the iPhone was available on more carriers.

    But again... the Blackberry was popular with regular consumers... I witnessed it.
  • Reply 35 of 46
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member

    I know what I saw. :D

    I had a Blackberry from 2009-2011. Most people I knew had a Blackberry. We all used BBM for messaging. It wasn't just one or two people... I had over 70 people on my BBM list.

    And these were all regular consumers... not enterprise customers.

    If someone had a smartphone... it was a Blackberry. Not a Palm phone... not Windows Mobile.

    And let's not forget that most people bought phones on 2-year contracts. If they bought a Blackberry in 2010... they would keep it until 2012.

    Then they got an iPhone ;)

    That's one thing I did notice: many people had a Blackberry... but they never bought another Blackberry. They went from a flip-phone to a Blackberry... and by the time their Blackberry contract ended it was time to try another platform.

    So yes... the Blackberry's consumer success was short-lived... but it definitely happened. I lived it... and I was not alone.

    ComScore reported that Blackberry had over 40% subscriber-share in the US in late 2009 to early 2010... which is exactly the time I'm talking about.

    Of course it dropped off rapidly when Android became popular and the iPhone was available on more carriers.

    But again... the Blackberry was popular with regular consumers... I witnessed it.

    Well then, your experience is very different from what we see reported in the most popular phones used in 2010 list. The Blackberry isn't even there!
  • Reply 36 of 46
    dasanman69dasanman69 Posts: 13,002member
    melgross wrote: »

    I know what I saw. :D

    I had a Blackberry from 2009-2011. Most people I knew had a Blackberry. We all used BBM for messaging. It wasn't just one or two people... I had over 70 people on my BBM list.

    And these were all regular consumers... not enterprise customers.

    If someone had a smartphone... it was a Blackberry. Not a Palm phone... not Windows Mobile.

    And let's not forget that most people bought phones on 2-year contracts. If they bought a Blackberry in 2010... they would keep it until 2012.

    Then they got an iPhone ;)

    That's one thing I did notice: many people had a Blackberry... but they never bought another Blackberry. They went from a flip-phone to a Blackberry... and by the time their Blackberry contract ended it was time to try another platform.

    So yes... the Blackberry's consumer success was short-lived... but it definitely happened. I lived it... and I was not alone.

    ComScore reported that Blackberry had over 40% subscriber-share in the US in late 2009 to early 2010... which is exactly the time I'm talking about.

    Of course it dropped off rapidly when Android became popular and the iPhone was available on more carriers.

    But again... the Blackberry was popular with regular consumers... I witnessed it.

    Well then, your experience is very different from what we see reported in the most popular phones used in 2010 list. The Blackberry isn't even there!

    Those are most likely worldwide numbers.
  • Reply 37 of 46
    melgross wrote: »
    Well then, your experience is very different from what we see reported in the most popular phones used in 2010 list. The Blackberry isn't even there!

    Very different indeed.

    According to the "Most Used" chart... this phone is the #2

    700

    Would that be #2 in the United States?

    And is that even a smartphone?

    This whole discussion started with the question whether Blackberry or Windows Mobile was more popular in the United States before the iPhone.

    Then I mentioned that Blackberry must have been rather popular at some point... since nearly everyone I knew had a Blackberry if they had a smartphone.

    Then you said Blackberry was never popular with consumers.

    Now we're looking at feature-phone sales?

    :D
  • Reply 38 of 46
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    dasanman69 wrote: »
    Those are most likely worldwide numbers.

    If you read the article, you would have seen that those were very clearly USA numbers. The biggest rise in Blackberry sales during these times were in third world countries. If you try to remember, they were bragging at how they were number one in Nigeria, Indonesia and Venezuela. Then shortly after, sales in N America bombed.
  • Reply 39 of 46
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Very different indeed.

    According to the "Most Used" chart... this phone is the #2

    700

    Would that be #2 in the United States?

    And is that even a smartphone?

    This whole discussion started with the question whether Blackberry or Windows Mobile was more popular in the United States before the iPhone.

    Then I mentioned that Blackberry must have been rather popular at some point... since nearly everyone I knew had a Blackberry if they had a smartphone.

    Then you said Blackberry was never popular with consumers.

    Now we're looking at feature-phone sales?

    :D

    For a number of years, there had been a dispute as to what constituted a smartphone. Symbian phones covered a very large ground. Today, we wouldn't consider some of them "real" smartphones, but back then, they were. In fact the first iPhone, today, wouldn't be considered to be a real smartphone, and indeed, Steve Jobs said that he didn't want it to be called that.

    But even if you don't want to consider that Nokia phone a real smartphone, and a feature phone instead, the question still, is where Blackberry would be. At best, they would have showed up at the bottom of that list.
  • Reply 40 of 46
    solipsismysolipsismy Posts: 5,099member
    melgross wrote: »
    Today, we wouldn't consider some of them "real" smartphones, but back then, they were.

    I don't consider most Android-based devices being sold today as smartphones simply because they were not designed to be a modern smartphone and subsequently not used as such.
    In fact the first iPhone, today, wouldn't be considered to be a real smartphone, and indeed, Steve Jobs said that he didn't want it to be called that.

    If you're implying Jobs didn't want to call it a smartphone because it wasn't smart enough, you're wrong. This is no difference than saying the Mac is not a PC after the rise of the IBM PC. It was simply a way of differentiating their product. The original iPhone is a modern smartphone due to the capacitive, multitouchscreen, advanced OS and the App Store that arrived in iOS 2.0. Have you noticed that people with phones typically refer to them in the generic phone, cellphone, celly, mobile, but those with iPhones usually efer to them by iPhones?
Sign In or Register to comment.