iSuppli finds worldwide cellphone shipments are up 13.8 percent, Motorola's share slipping
By Donald Melanson 
posted May 17th 2010 7:31PM
posted May 17th 2010 7:31PM
We've already seen Motorola's market share slip a bit when it comes to US cellphone shipments, and it looks like the news is even worse for the company on a global scale. According to iSuppli's latest numbers -- which back up some earlier reports -- while worldwide cellphone shipments rose a healthy 13.8 percent in the first quarter of 2010, Motorola slipped from sixth to eighth spot in the global rankings, selling a total of 8.5 million phones compared to 14.7 million during the same period a year earlier. As you can see in the helpful chart above (with sales indicated in thousands), Motorola's loss came largely at the expense of considerable gains from market leaders Nokia and Samsung, with LG, RIM and Apple also seeing some smaller but significant gains. And, yes, this news also means that Motorola is also now in a neck and neck race with ZTE, for what it's worth.
[Thanks, Katie]
[Thanks, Katie]
Where's HTC?
@Seb6554 Yeah, where is HTC? In "Others" maybe?
@Seb6554 Exactly what i was thinking! Now where is one of the best?
@Seb6554 Better yet, where's Palm? Lol.
@barkerja
In HP's hands
@Seb6554 Somebody's jealous of HTC, I assume.
I guess the problem is that many of their phones aren't self-branded.
@Seb6554 if you're watching Steve Jobs keynote you think that Apple is the most successful company ever.
Then here's this. You feel like you've been brainwashed.
@Seb6554
HTC sold 3.3 million phones in Q1. So a bit further to the right....
http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/29/htc-expects-36-percent-increase-in-q2-sales-thanks-android/
@SeeKo
I hope that everyone can see here that news coverage doesn't equal sales or even revenue. No one should be surprised by that chart. The presumption of many that this chart should look any different is simply the work of some very clever marketing departments and the help of the media.
@mikmik111 How many companies that you know of have $40 billion cash on-hand?
Apple is more than just the iphone you know.
@mikmik111 Apple is one of only two companies to double their numbers, according to that chart. They're the only American one to do so. I'd say they have some reason to boast.
@Seb6554
LOL HTC fanboy reality check....
@Seb6554
It would matter a lot if the results weren't good enough to make feel at ease...seriously, engadget has teased us so much with "that" company that I expected to see gigantic bars over the fruit name.
@Wesscoast not really... they just recently started self branding phones so i would expect to see them on the higher end of this chart wothing a year or two which will be a much quicker pace than apples 4 year rise to not beating RIM
@Seb6554
HTC has very little market penetration outside of the US. I'm in Australia and have only seen two actually in people's hands.... and one of those was a friend who was visiting from the US.
@Wesscoast
i'm not an HTC fanboy, I've never even seen an HTC phone in person other than demo sets at Best Buy. I was just pointing out that HTC wasn't included in the chart.
@Seb6554
yeah, same as most people... that explains why its in the OTHERS category. I saw one a couple weeks ago running Android.Nice hardware, but Android is meh.
@mikmik111
They're actually the #3 most successful company ever.
#2 is Microsoft, with a 90% share in OS's and
#1 is ExxonMobil...
Let's see how the order is in 2011....;)
@Wesscoast where is that statistic from exactly? Did you just make it up really?
@SteveyAyo
Marketcap? I didn't invent it.
@Wesscoast
Err... ever? Market cap isn't fixed y'know.
@MarkAnderson
did you try to 'remind' me that stock prices aren't fixed? thanks.
well, those 1, 2, 3 are fixed, until Apple surpasses MS.
@Wesscoast
Fixed untill they are not means they are not fixed. And market cap? Please.
LOL @ Apple bullshit...
@Seb6554 Motorola should do something, much like what they did over the Droid, or HTC will eat them with its EVO. Opinions- http://j.mp/4g-by-evo-amazing-matchup
interesting.... very interesting ...
@Bocefuss4500
HOLY NOKIA!
Now THAT is what I call marketshare...
So what happened to Apple being the "Number One/Biggest Mobile Company in the world" claim...?
And I think they missed HTC...
@kapanak
"So what happened to Apple being the "Number One/Biggest Mobile Company in the world" claim...?"
you must be incredibly stupid if you thought they meant most phones shipped when they explained that they included laptop sales.
@account5
Even if they included laptop sales, I still fail to see how that makes them the "biggest" in the world...
@account5
And since when do laptops qualify as "mobile devices"? They are personal computers...sure you can take them around, but even if in definition, they are mobile, they do not fit the category...
And if laptops sales are counted...Dell and HP sell a whole lot more laptops than Apple...
@kapanak Apple is the biggest mobile electronics company in terms of revenue. And mobile doesn't just mean mobile phone, it means any electronics that you can carry on you. Laptops are exluded because they are considered "portable" even though the new Vaios are small enough where Sony reclassified them as mobile. iPods would be considered a mobile music player.
@kapanak
But you forget the RDS factor in all statistics.. Basically statistical revisionism. These are raw cell phone shipments.. You must remove all the areas that Apple doesn't compete in first, then subtract all the brands that fanboys say are icky.
And if that doesn't work.. Shift it to a different quantifier, like total number of a single handset sold, market price of Apple stock, reported earnings last quarter, or anything else that will distract from the need to get a magnifying glass to seethe Apple columns. instead.
@Narutogrey
And even that arbitrary way of defining total sales, does not lead to Apple rev > Nokia rev. Not that I care, but it was another highly imaginative "fact" by Mr Jobs.
@Narutogrey
And even then you are wrong.
@(Unverified)
Could not have possibly put it better myself...
@Narutogrey
No, you are misunderstanding it all...They aren't even that big in terms of revenue...Apple just likes to save its money in the bank for all those acquirements and just in case Jobs suddenly ... flies to heaven ... They have just under 50 BILLION dollars in the bank, and the Stock Exchange loves Apple stocks, so they are worth a lot...other than that, they have sold far FAR less handsets, even if you include the falsely classified iPod Touch and iPad, than the likes of Nokia, S/E, Samsung, LG, etc...There is nothing BIG about Apple, except the collective size of their fanboys' fingers and their veins due to rapid typing and extreme stress when Apple is bashed anywhere on the internet...
@kapanak
The thing about Nokia is that they cell loads of phones, but they don't sell as many smartphones (which is where everybody seems to think the market is headed, and is backed by figures showing smartphones eating cellphone sales).
Nokia just announced a major corporate reshuffle, 6 months after their last one. They keep moving the smartphone department around, trying to find something that works. They've shown no leadership in the smartphone area, and nothing suggests that will change. If smartphones really are eating in to cellphone sales, that's really, really bad news for Nokia. It's quite easy to claim that the current standing is just a reflection of the fact that smartphones are still a growing market. As the market grows, smartphone leaders like RIM, Apple and HTC will take a bigger slice.
When it comes to dodgy statistics, don't heap it all on Apple. Nokia claim their cellphone success allows them to claim more MP3 player sales than the iPod, even though the two are quite different markets.
@KarlW
What you just wrote is, uhm, not so smart.
First some facts, Nokia is stronger in Smartphones than they are in general. This means if Smartphone sales grow, they grow, which is exactly what we are seeing in the market. Your points on this are baseless and do not make sense, Nokia sells about the same number of smartphones than Apple, RIM & HTC combined. Granted, its ASP is lower, but that is due to the broad array of smartphones they sell.
Secondly, what will change the fact that they currently do not have the most sophisticated flagship for the general consumer (they have with the N900 for techies) is the mainstream launch of MeeGo & S^4. It might be late, but it is definitely not too little. (S^3 will be leaps and bounds better than S60 5th already) In conjunction to that, Nokia are the kings of hardware. No one has the skill they do. Do not mistake this for not putting in the latest processor in every phone. Nokia is full well capable of doing this but it just isnt necessary for Symbian to run and doesnt make sense. Top end processors will be in MeeGo devices though.
Smartphone ASP for Nokia will keep going down, because they can, because it will hurt the competition (Sammy & LG) and because the will sell more. This does not negate the fact that we will see the return of a very lucrative extreme high end devices portfolio. Surely this will only add to the bottom line, which was about a Billion last quarter.
And on dodgy statistics, I do believe Apple is very creative in these, whereas Nokia actually uses more stringent calculation methods for their own marketshare as of a few months ago. They even account for grey market & KIRF's.
Let's not forget: we only really care about smartphones. The masses that use dumbphones are like air to us.
@pizzaman
True, the picture would look very different then, Nokia still having by far the largest share, then RIM, Apple.
lol. Alcatel's funny
@artstate. Yeeeessssss....Laugh at their Failure......It makes them weak...gives you power
@artstate
Looks to me like they might have the biggest year on year growth. You won't be laughing when everyone has one :)
@Wolfticket
No. No one will be laughing because everyone will have the exact same thing, laughter will die along with individual necessity.
@artstate
How can Alcatel be growing like that? The last time i heard of them they were selling some crappy phone that nobody wanted 5 years ago. I assumed they stopped dealing with mobile phones altogether since then.
Is HTC on that list?
If so where are they relative to Apple?
Apple is doing good so far tho....can't wait to see what iPhone 4G looks like!
@TheLondonExchange You can't wait to know how the iPhone 4G "looks like"?
Welcome back to planet Earth?
@TheLondonExchange
You sir, are an extremely late individual.
@TheLondonExchange - I'd say it's gonna be iPhone HD vs htc EVO 4G until the Tegra 2-based handsets come out at the end of the year. Good times for the consumer.
@TheLondonExchange
He is from London, and after pirating many movies, the ISP has shut him down...so he has been living under a rock for the past two months...