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Apple's year of cheap battery upgrades resulted in 11 million repairs
In a recent all-hands meeting, Tim Cook reportedly revealed that Apple replaced 11 million iPhone batteries in 2018, up from its normal 1-2 million tally. The spike was a result of Apple's price cut to its battery replacement program as part of the fallout from its iPhone throttling debacle. And it seems that trend hit Apple where it hurts: iPhone sales.
Xiaomi may now be the third-biggest smartphone maker in world
Xiaomi, the smartphone of choice in China, just had a really good few months selling phones. According to Strategy Analytics, it reckon the new phone maker is now the third largest smartphone maker in the world, trailing only Samsung and Apple. Its shipments have tripled in the space of a year, now up to 18 million in Q3 2014, while its share of the smartphone has also more than doubled, shifting from 2.1 to 5.6 percent. Those sales also make it the 5th largest phone manufacturer (including cheaper feature phones). While Samsung (24.7 percent) and Apple (12.3 percent) still dominate, LG's recent good run, selling a record number of phones, has also moved it to fourth. Barring making it big in India, we're looking to see what Xiaomi's going to do next.
Analysis: Only one-third of Samsung smartphone sales are of iPhone class
Daniel Eran Dilger at AppleInsider took a look at the numbers reported at Samsung Mobile's investor meeting today and reports that numbers show that the company sold fewer high-end smartphones than Apple this year. News from the meeting wasn't too upbeat for Samsung Mobile. Dilger notes that the executives chose to focus attention on the company's future plans to accelerate acquisitions to move focus away from lagging sales of high-end smartphones. Since 2010, Samsung has made about 14 acquisitions. Apple has made about the same number of acquisitions in the past year, and Google has made about one acquisition a week since 2010. Dilger quoted a Bloomberg report noting that Samsung "has used sales of cheaper handsets in emerging markets to stoke earnings in mobiles as growth in high-end devices slows amid market saturation." Samsung's latest quarterly earnings report shows that "high-end model shipments stayed at similar level QoQ" -- indicating stalled growth -- while Apple's iPhone sales were up 26 percent over the quarter a year ago. That's not all of the bad news for Apple's primary competitor in the smartphone market: Dilger points out that all of those devices sold by Apple were high-end, while roughly one-third (126 million of total projected 2014 sales of 360 million devices) will actually be premium models like the Galaxy S and Note series. Dilger ends his piece with the observation that "Apple also relies very upon iPhone sales, but it also has profitable Mac, iPad and iTunes, software and service related businesses, which generate 10 times the profit of Samsung's struggling Chromebook netbook, Android tablet, and Windows PC sales." For more details and graphs illustrating the situation that Apple's archrival is in, be sure to take a look at the AppleInsider piece. Image: Samsung, via AppleInsider
BlackBerry Z10 prices slashed across the board: $99 at Verizon and AT&T, $49 on Amazon
Looking for an excuse to try out BlackBerry's latest flagship? Here's one: now it's cheap. Folks willing to sign up for a usual two year agreement can score the BlackBerry Z10 for $99 at both AT&T and Verizon or a mere $49 at Amazon. The price drop is most likely designed to spur sales in the wake of the Canadian company's $84 million loss last quarter. "Now is the right time to adjust the price," a BlackBerry spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal. "It's part of life cycle management to tier the pricing for current devices to make room for the next ones." In other words, BlackBerry needs to move its existing stock before it can sell the public on a second-generation device. Either way, the Z10 is a steal at $49 -- unless you're in one of the regions that's simply giving them away.
BlackBerry shipped just 2.7 million BB 10 handsets last quarter (updated)
BlackBerry got off to a roaring start with with the Z10, which shipped a million devices in its first three weeks on the market and led many to predict there'd be at least 3 million shipped this quarter (the first full quarter of Z10 availability). That turned out not to be the case, as the company said during an earnings call for Q1 2014 that it managed to get just 2.7 million BlackBerry 10 OS handsets out the door, despite the Q10 having joined the Z10 on shelves for a good part of that period. Those figures make up just 40 percent of its handset numbers, meaning most of the 6.8 million phones it shipped consisted of cheaper last-gen products. They refused to break those numbers down between the Q10 and Z10, so that's all we have to go on at this point -- but taken with its announcement of an $84 million loss, it's far from encouraging. Update: Apologies, folks. Our original headline said 2.7 million were sold, whereas in fact the figure indicates shipping numbers. The post itself is unchanged and accurate. For reference, BlackBerry's actual sales to end users lagged behind shipments by around 30 percent when they revealed the previous set of figures back in March.
Gartner: half of smartphones sold are Apple or Samsung, Huawei third for the first time
We saw last quarter that while mobile phone buyers were on the decline in general, smartphone sales were way, way up. That's how 2012 finished off as well according to Gartner, with cellphone purchases down 1.7 percent overall from 2011, but sales of higher-IQ models up 38.3 percent year-on-year. Samsung and Apple fared particularly well in the latter category for Q4 2012, making up over 52 percent of smartphones sold compared to 46 percent in Q3. Meanwhile, being embroiled in the odd security row didn't stop upstart Huawei from hitting the smartphone podium for the first time with 27.2 million handsets sold in Q4 2012, a 73.8 percent jump over last year -- but a distant third behind Samsung's 64.5 million units and 43.5 million for Apple. Meanwhile, Nokia dropped 53.6 percent from last year with 39.3 million units sold, though it's likely too soon to tell whether WP8 will boost it anew. Speaking of Redmond's Windows Phone ecosystem, it grew a modest 1.2 percent in Q4 to grab 3 percent of the market just behind BlackBerry, which tumbled 44.4 percent but stayed in third spot on 3.5 percent of devices. With new products now in the market, the two OSes will likely see a protracted battle for third spot over the next year, according to the survey outfit. Android widened its margin to control a whopping 69.7 percent share of the smartphone OS market compared to 20.9 percent for iOS, a bump of 87.8 percent over the quarter. Otherwise, your Badas, Symbians and others are battling for scraps, and will soon have certain new Linux-based predators to watch out for, to boot.
IDC: Samsung extends lead over Apple in smartphone marketshare, while Huawei and ZTE increase influence
Right off the heels of too many financial reports and yet more smartphone research, IDC has weighed in with its own thoughts and analysis, noting that demand for smartphones is -- unsurprisingly -- not letting up. While the global market for mobile phones grew by 1.9 percent in the last quarter, "strong holiday smartphone sales" meant that units shipped were almost equal that of cheaper feature phones. 219.4 million smartphones shipped -- 45.5 percent of all phone shipments -- was slightly below IDC's optimistic predictions for Q4, but it's still been a notable quarter for new competitors like Huawei, which elbowed LG out from the top 5. IDC's senior analyst Kevin Restivo puts it down to Huawei's advantage in low-cost devices, not to mention its placement within China -- a country that can't get enough of phones. ZTE also placed within IDC's Top 5 smartphone vendor leaderboard in the last quarter, with a 4.3 percent marketshare, although Samsung (29 percent) and Apple (21.8 percent) continued to dominate the top spots. Samsung saw a 76 percent increase since Q4 2011, extending its lead over the iPhone maker, while Huawei, now third, saw an 89.5 percent year-on-year increase on its smartphone shipments. Estimates on Sony's shipments place it fourth, with a decent 55.6 percent change since the same quarter in 2011. Annual smartphone sales saw a more familiar pecking order, with Samsung, Apple, Nokia, HTC and RIM filling the lead positions. Year-on-year changes for Nokia, HTC and RIM were negative, likely affected on both sides by the aforementioned champions and new contenders -- the Finnish phone maker dropped shipments by 54.6 percent according to IDC's figures. Prefer your metrics and year-on-year changes tabled? Well, we've added both the quarterly and annual summaries right after the break.
Nano-SIM for next iPhone makes appearance ahead of launch?
First we saw a supposed leak of the next iPhone's nano-SIM tray, and now we're seeing alleged photos of the nano-SIM itself. iFun posted an image of what it says is a new T-Mobile nano-SIM that has just started arriving at the German carrier. The package apparently came with a message telling carriers that these SIMs are for smartphones about to go on the market, and that they're not to be given to customers -- yet. Cupertino, of course, tweaked its nano-SIM design earlier this year, and this photo does come ahead of an Apple announcement event rumored for next week.
NPD: iPhones recover market share in Q4 2011, but Android draws the first-timer crowds
According to the latest research from the NPD group, Apple has got its second wind in smartphone sales. In the same quarter that saw the iPhone 4S reinvent the wheel obey our every vocal whim, the trio of available models soaked up a total of 43 percent of the US smartphone market in Q4 2012, apparently gnawing away at Android's market share of 53 percent held during the rest of 2011. However, Google's mobile OS appears to be the debutante smartphone of choice, cornering 57 percent of new purchases, with 34 percent going for Apple. The remaining 9 percent is distributed between the smartphone also-rans, with the likes of Windows Phone and BlackBerry languishing in that anonymous grey bar at the top. The top five handsets from NPD's Mobile Phone Track service is an Apple and Samsung love-in, with iOS devices claiming the three top spots, followed by the Samsung Galaxy S II (we assume collectively) and the Galaxy S 4G. NPD's blow-by-blow commentary on this increasingly two-horse race awaits below.
Android leads US market share, iOS may have stopped growing, RIM is still falling
NPD just published its latest plotting of the great American smartphone OS rivalry, and although the report covers annual rather than quarterly trends, it's perhaps more interesting to hold it up against the previous set of figures we saw -- those for Q2 2011. Back then, Google's OS had a 52 percent share, but these new figures suggest a marginally better performance of 53 percent between January and October. Meanwhile, iOS's 29 percent share is identical to what we saw in Q2, hinting that its growth has slowed right down or even stopped. RIM's share of the pie is 10 percent, compared to 11 percent in Q2, showing that the Summer flurry of new BB7 handsets like the Bold 9930 and Torch 9810 had little immediate impact. WP7 obstinately refuses to overtake Windows Mobile, although these figures are pre-Titan, while the doomed Symbian and webOS are barely clinging to life. Aside from all that, perhaps the only stats that are genuinely still shocking are those at the top of the column for 2006. Click below for further detail's in NPD's press release.
Gartner's Q3 2011 smartphone figures: Samsung on top globally, Android tops 50 percent share
Yahtzee! Now that Canalys, IDC and Strategy Analytics have had their turn, it's Gartner's go to serve up its summary of the smartphone world as seen in Q3 2011. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the headlines aren't changing much, with Samsung becoming the number one smartphone manufacturer worldwide with sales reaching 24 million, and Android's quarterly market share inching over 50 percent to best iOS, BlackBerry OS, etc. We also (re)learned that Apple shipped 17 million iPhones in the quarter, which represents an annual uptick of 21 percent, but a 3 percent drop from Q2 2011 due to the looming iPhone 4S release; predictably, Gartner's predicting that Apple's Q4 2011 will be its strongest yet with the 4S on the market. Breaking the operating system share a bit, we found that Symbian is (strangely) still being included, and that Android managed to soar from 25.3 percent in Q3 2010 to 52.5 percent today. iOS actually lost a bit of ground (16.6 percent a year ago compared to 15 percent today), but in fairness, so did BlackBerry OS and Bada. Curious about Microsoft? It's claiming just 1.5 percent of the worldwide pie, a fairly precipitous drop from the 2.7 percent it had a year ago. Far more fun facts and figures await you after the break.
Apple now the world's largest smartphone manufacturer, Samsung checks in at number two
We make our own truth. That's how IDC can come up with roughly the same numbers as fellow research firm Canalys and crown Apple the king, when its rival called Android top dog -- it's all about how you slice it. See, where as Canalys bundled all Android handset makers together, IDC has broken them up, which leads to a rather interesting twist -- the largest smartphone maker in the world is now Apple. Cupertino's growth of 141.7-percent in shipments year over year was enough to push it past Nokia (which slipped to number three) and Samsung (which climbed two spots to take the silver medal), while RIM and HTC rounded out the top five. That being said, no one is running away with the lead here, and Sammy's continued stratospheric rise should keep Apple on guard. Check out the full report after the break.
Sony Ericsson's Q1 profit falls 48 percent on weak sales, low supplies
We knew Sony Ericsson's supplies were tight following the recent natural disasters in Japan, but in retrospect it's clear the phone maker was already having a rough quarter. The company released its Q1 earnings today, and reported that its profit fell 48 percent to €11 million ($15.8 million) due to weak sales -- a shortfall compounded by higher taxes and quake-related supply constraints. To be fair, at this time last year, the company earned money after a sweet tax benefit, so its profit wasn't completely built on strong sales. All told, it sold 8.1 million phones in the most recent quarter -- down 23 percent from the same period a year ago, though the average selling price for handsets ticked up 5 percent. In particular, smartphones accounted for 60 percent of the company's sales, though by the company's own estimate, it's only snagged 5 percent of global market share. And, it seems, Sony Ericsson's management team isn't getting too ambitious -- it forecast just a "modest" uptick in overall phone sales in 2011.
AT&T trains retail staff on non-iPhone smartphones
When the iPhone burst upon the world three and a half years ago, the smartphone landscape was very different from the one we see today. Palm Treos, Blackberries and Windows Mobile were the dominant players; they were mainly selected by geeks and people that needed them for business. In the intervening period, the staff at AT&T stores have focused on selling and supporting Apple's super-phone, but that's beginning to change as it appears ever more likely that iPhones will soon be available from other American cell carriers. Bloomberg reports that after dipping its toe into the Android pool in the past six months, AT&T is about to dive into the deep end with three more Motorola Android phones plus three Windows Phone 7 handsets -- all in anticipation of losing exclusivity on the iPhone. Consultant Craig Johnson warns that AT&T may risk turning off customers by offering too many new choices at once after focusing on a single device and user interface since 2007. Given the tight grip that Microsoft is maintaining on the Win7 interface and the consistent Motoblur skin that Motorola is applying to its phones, that might not be so much of a problem. The main choice that customers will have to make is the desired form factor and features on the individual phones. While AT&T plans to keep selling iPhones for the foreseeable future even if Verizon gets a version come 2011, it has already begun refreshing its stores and training its 25,000 retail employees to sell and support all of the new handsets. Staff in urban areas will get four hour in-store classes while those in rural stores will participate via live video streams. Sales staff will also be incentivized to move the new phones with an offer of a free handset for being among the first to sell four of the new phones.
HTC says its growth in the US is 'faster than others'
This one's fairly light on specifics, but HTC CEO Peter Chou has given an interview to The Wall Street Journal where he dropped a few interesting tidbits, the most notable being that HTC's growth in the US is apparently "faster than others." Exactly what that translates to in actual numbers is unclear, but Chou did say that HTC expects to ship more than the 5.5 million to 6 million smartphones it shipped in the US last year. That growth is apparently due in large part to support from Verizon and T-Mobile, which Chou says "started treating us as their first-tier suppliers last year" and gave the company some "strong momentum." Chou also went on to confirm that HTC will be introducing six new models for China in partnership with China Mobile this year, and that it's aiming to ship four to five million units to China annually by 2011.
