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Canalys: Android nabbed 75 percent of smartphone shipments in Q1
Canalys is back with its latest worldwide estimates of mobile device shipments, and while the analyst group has a divisive way of combining figures, there's plenty of insight to discover in its breakdown of the smartphone and tablet realms. First off, Canalys reports that Android accounted for 75.6 percent of all smartphone shipments during Q1, which is an increase from the 69.2 percent it reported for the previous quarter. As a whole, Canalys estimates that 216.3 million smartphones were shipped during Q1, which is roughly steady when compared to the three months prior. It should come as no surprise, but Samsung is said to lead the category with nearly a third of all smartphone shipments, while Apple accounted for roughly 17 percent of the pie. Meanwhile, Huawei, LG and ZTE are next in line, each with less than 5 percent of the market. Given the prevalence of the iPad, you could just as easily guess that Apple continues to dominate the tablet category and still be right. Here, Canalys estimates that Apple holds a 46.4 percent market share, but qualifies that win, as that the company is losing ground to its Android-based rivals. On the upside, Canalys reckons that the tablet market has more than doubled from the previous year, which means there's plenty of pie to go around. [Image credit: Jon Fingas, Flickr]
Apple's share of the U.S. smartphone market now close to 40%
The latest data from comScore indicates the iPhone's share of the U.S. smartphone is growing and is now inching ever so close to 40%. For the period covering the first three months of 2013, comScore's data shows that the iPhone's share of the U.S. smartphone market checked in at 39%, representing a mild gain from the period ending December 2012 when the iPhone accounted for 36.3% of the U.S. smartphone market. Coming in second was Samsung with 21.7% of the market. Of course, when the metrics turn to overall platform share, Apple takes a backseat to Android which accounted for 52% of the U.S. smartphone market during Q1 2013. Overall though, Apple's platform share went up by 2.7 percentage points while Google's Android lost 1.4 percentage points. As evidenced by the chart above, Apple and Android together own 91% of the smartphone market and there's no indication that Microsoft and BlackBerry will be able to narrow that lead anytime soon, if at all.
iPad commands lion's share of tablet market despite Samsung's gains
The latest Q1 2013 research data from IDC shows that the market for tablets is absolutely booming, growing 142.4 percent year over year. To put that into context, IDC notes that the 49.2 million tablets shipped during the first three months of 2013 is greater than the number of tablets shipped during the first six months of 2012. As one might expect, Apple's iPad continues to lead the tablet charge, ranking first in both market share and in overall unit sales. Specifically, Apple's iPad sales increased 65.3 percent year over year, climbing from 11.8 million units during Q1 2012 to 19.5 million units during Q1 2013. Apple's market share, however, went down from 58.1 percent to 39.6 percent on account of impressive sales growth from competing manufacturers. Samsung, for example, saw its tablet shipments increase by 282.6 percent year over year while Amazon enjoyed an estimated 157.1 percent increase in unit shipments year over year. The big winner this quarter was Asus who saw its year over year tablet growth explode by 350 percent, undoubtedly bolstered by strong sales of the Nexus 7. When you break up the tablet market by operating system, Apple's iOS falls to second place behind Android.
IDC: Android topped tablet share in Q1 at 57 percent, Apple led manufacturers
We were expecting a changing of the guard among tablets given the rise of several competitors throughout in 2012, and we've seen just that in IDC's market share estimates for the first quarter of 2013. The research firm shows Android having almost reversed the share it held a year ago, claiming the top spot at 56.5 percent; Apple's huge spike in year-over-year iPad sales wasn't enough to keep it from dipping to 39.6 percent. Microsoft's estimated performance tells a more complex story, however. Its second quarter of Windows 8 and RT sales involved a big year-to-year jump as well, but it was also starting largely from scratch -- the combined Windows platform was still tiny at 3.7 percent. The pecking order remained mostly the same among individual manufacturers, although the charts here explain just why OS share shifted so much in the winter. While Apple remained comfortably in front with its 39.6 percent, just about every rival made a dent: Samsung, ASUS, Amazon and Microsoft all gained at least a small amount, even if no one manufacturer posed a major threat. IDC is providing shipping numbers that don't necessarily reflect the on-the-ground sales, especially when everyone beyond Apple declines to report official numbers, but they suggest that tablets like the Nexus 7 and Surface Pro have found at least a small audience.
Study: iPhone loyalty will give Apple the marketshare edge over Android by 2015
All Things D directs us to a new survey conducted by the Yankee Group which offers a compelling look into current smartphone ownership trends in the US and what the smartphone landscape may look like down the line. Over the past 12 months, the Yankee Group surveyed 16,000 consumers and asked them about their smartphones and their plans for smartphone purchases in the future. Not surprisingly, the study found that the smartphone landscape is currently dominated by the iPhone and a slew of Android devices. What's more, there doesn't seem to be any indication that's going to change anytime in the near future, despite the best efforts of Microsoft and RIM. One of the more interesting aspects of the study centered on smartphone loyalty, and in that regard the iPhone has Android beat. Whereas 91 percent of surveyed iPhone owners plan to purchase another iPhone, only 76 percent of Android users intend to purchase another Android device. And while 6 percent of iPhone owners indicated an intention to defect to Android, the bulk of Android defectors will be heading towards the iPhone, 18 percent to be exact. Indeed, the Yankee Group writes that customer loyalty will be why the iPhone's share of the smartphone market will eclipse Android's come 2015. The Yankee Group writes: Think of the Apple and Android ecosystems as two buckets of water. New smartphone buyers -- mostly upgrading feature phone owners -- fall like rain into the two big buckets about equally, with a smaller number falling into Windows Phone and BlackBerry buckets. However, the Android bucket leaks badly, losing about one in five of all the owners put into it. The Apple bucket leaks only about 7 percent of its contents, so it retains more of the customers that fall into it. The Apple bucket will fill up faster and higher than the Android one, regardless of the fact that the Apple bucket may have had fewer owners in it to begin with. It's undoubtedly an interesting theory, and while there's no way to really know in which direction smartphone marketshare will tilt, one thing that does seem clear is that the smartphone market at this point is a two-player race. On a slightly different note, Apple is still the top dog when it comes to smartphone profit share. Last year we noted how Apple's share of global profits in the smartphone industry checked in at an astonishing 75 percent.
NPD Group: iTunes owns the internet video market
We'll find out how Apple's financial fortunes are faring a bit later this afternoon, but for now, there's a report out of The NPD Group showing that Apple now dominates home digital video the way it does the digital music market. The numbers are staggering: Apple's iTunes Store had a 67 percent share of electronic sell-through (EST) for television shows in 2012. How big is that? The nearest competitor was Xbox Video with a 14 percent share of EST. The stats were also in favor of Apple for feature-length movie downloads, with the company pulling in a 65 percent share of EST. Xbox Video and Amazon Instant video weren't even close in the competition, each having a 10 percent share. While Apple's lead wasn't as incredible in the internet video-on-demand sector, iTunes still led the way with 45 percent of the market. Despite Amazon Instant Video's popularity, it has less than half of the movie rental traffic of Apple at just 18 percent. Russ Crupnick, senior VP of industry analysis at NPD, believes that Apple's early moves in the market allowed the company to dominate the digital sales and rental markets for movies and that customer satisfaction is what's keeping the numbers high. Crupnick notes, "We've seen big-name entertainment retailers lose share, and even close, as their customer satisfaction metrics faded; however, that's clearly not the case with iTunes. Customers are quite happy with the store."
Apple sells 5% of PCs world-wide, makes 45% of the profit
Talk to people who are PC fans and they'll point out that while Apple controls the smartphone market in many respects, the company still only has a small fraction of the global PC market. But as Horace Dediu at Asymco points out, any other PC maker in the world (like Dell, HP or ASUS) would kill to have Apple's share of the PC market if it meant also getting Apple's share of the profits. You see, while Apple only owns 5 percent of the world-wide PC market, they make 45 percent of the profit. As you can see from the chart above, the next largest single-player profit share of the market is Dell, which gets a measly 13 percent. As Dediu explains, "The real problem for the PC vendors is not that they have such low margins -- they've had low margins for decades. It's that the volumes which 'made up for' low margins are disappearing." Those disappearing volumes are largely due to increased sales from smartphones and tablets like the iPad. Speaking of the smartphone market, Dediu says that Apple owns a whopping 72 percent of profits across all mobile phone sales. [via Apple 2.0]
IDC: PC shipments in Q1 faced their steepest known drop to date
If Windows 8 is the ticket to a bounce-back in PC sales, it's going to be a long, slow recovery. At least, as long as you ask IDC. It estimates that worldwide computer shipments in the first quarter of 2013 fell 13.9 percent to 76.3 million, which is the steepest quarterly drop the research firm has recorded since it started tracking PCs back in 1994. While the exact factors at work aren't clear, IDC blames it on a mix of customers spooked by Windows 8's unfamiliar interface, the continued rise of mobile devices, and the decline of the netbook. This isn't helped by the higher typical prices of touchscreen PCs, or by restructuring efforts at computing giants like Dell and HP. Who's reigning in this apparently declining PC empire, then? Worldwide, it's a different picture than it was a few months ago: HP is back on top at 15.7 percent, followed by Lenovo, Dell, Acer and ASUS. The American climate is somewhat more familiar, with HP in front at 25.1 percent while being chased by Dell, Apple, Toshiba and Lenovo. With the exception of Lenovo, however, virtually all of the manufacturers involved saw at least some decline in their PC shipments. To IDC, that's a sign that vendors and Microsoft need to find an antidote to the crazes for smartphones and tablets -- and find it quickly.
iPhone marketshare continues to increase according to latest comScore reports
If you've been listening to the rumor mill lately, you might mistakenly assume that iPhone sales are plummeting. Indeed, a head-scratching and yet oft-repeated argument making the rounds these days suggests that Apple needs to behave more like Samsung if it wants to remain competitive in the smartphone market. The cold hard data, however, paints a much different picture. Recent data released by comScore shows that Apple's share of the smartphone market is growing while Samsung's is down ever so slightly. From December through February, Apple's average share of the smartphone market went up from 35% to 38.9%. Samsung's share, meanwhile, went up only slightly, from 20.3% to 21.3%. comScore's results also reveal that every other handset maker experienced a decline in marketshare over the past few months. It goes without saying that the smartphone market is currently a two horse race between Apple and Samsung. But again, the data indicates that Apple's share of the smartphone market is growing faster than Samsung's. The story is even rosier for Apple when we look at overall platform marketshare. Here we see that Apple's share during the three month period tracked by comScore went up by 3.9% to finish at 38.9%. And while Google's Android platform still reigns supreme with a 51.7% share, it's total marketshare actually decreased by 2 percentage points. And lest you think this is a one time occurrence, previous data released by comScore suggests a more entrenched pattern. To wit, Google's share of smartphone subscribers for the three month period ending in January of 2013 was 52.3% while Apple's was 37.8%. So for each of the last 3 three-month periods, Google's platform marketshare has gone down sequentially while Apple's has risen from 35% to 37.8% and now 38.9%. As a final point of interest, note how Google and Apple together account for 90.6% of all smartphone users.
ComScore: Apple up to 39 percent US smartphone share in February, Android on top at 52 percent
While there's no question that Android is thriving on the global scale, the situation is a little more complicated in the US when looking at ComScore's market share data for February. The platform is still comfortably ahead in the American smartphone sphere at 51.7 percent, but the figure represents the second consecutive dip in recent months, and roughly matches share that we saw back in June. Apple is headed in the opposite direction and appears to be the main beneficiary of Google's drop, albeit at a less-than-breakneck pace: the iPhone continued a gradual climb in February that put it at 38.9 percent. We're not surprised that BlackBerry declined once more in its last month before the Z10 reached the US, although Microsoft will be happy to hear that Windows Phone inched forward again to 3.2 percent. Among individual smartphone makers, it's more of a familiar story. Apple's platform control gave it the lead at 38.9 percent, while Samsung at 21.3 percent was hovering roughly around the same share it had in January. As for everyone else? It's a bit ugly, to be honest. HTC, Motorola and LG all lost share in February, leaving the US firmly in a two-horse race. That said, we wouldn't be surprised if the market plays a different tune around April and May: with 2013 Android flagships like the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S 4 just around the corner, there's room for a potential upset.
Strategy Analytics: iCloud, Dropbox and Amazon top cloud media in the US
We often focus on market share for hardware, but cloud media services increasingly dictate our lives after the devices have reached our bags and pockets. Wouldn't it be nice to know who rules the online media landscape? According to Strategy Analytics' just-published study from the fall, it's Apple's iCloud and iTunes Match that are top dogs in the US at a combined 27 percent of usage -- a not entirely surprising lead when Apple has pushed hard on iCloud's media syncing since iOS 5, and has large swaths of market share in MP3 players and tablets, not just smartphones. There's a considerably tougher fight involved for just about everyone else, however, including Google. Dropbox and Amazon Cloud Player are almost neck-and-neck at 17 and 15 percent respectively, while Google Drive holds just 10 percent. Music is clearly the driving force, Strategy Analytics says: when audio represents 45 percent of the content on a generic platform like Dropbox, companies ignore tunes at their own peril. Just don't confuse market share with absolute popularity. A full 55 percent of those asked hadn't used a cloud media service at all, which suggests that there's a long road to travel before we're all streaming and syncing our collections.
Mac sales up as iMac supply improves
Mac sales were down for the holiday 2012 quarter due to supply constraints on the new iMac models, but NPD Group data is showing that sales are up 14 percent year over year for January and February. According to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, that growth is due to improved availability of the all-in-one iMacs that began shipping in November 2012. Munster believes that total global Mac sales for the March quarter will be down 5 percent year over year, but provided some positive spin in saying that there's room for "some slight upside." Munster noted that iMac sales are less impacted by cannibalization by sales of iPads, so the "vast majority of the y/y unit decline in December was likely supply." Those supply issues were apparently caused by problems with a new screen lamination processed used in the ultra-thin late 2012 iMacs.
Apple hit number two in India's smartphone market
IDC has released new numbers for India's smartphone market share and the results are very good for Apple. In Q4 2012 Apple controlled 15.2 percent of India's market, putting them in second place behind Samsung who has 38.8 percent of the market. The second place position is huge for Apple as just a quarter earlier Apple didn't even land in the top five. As noted by TechCrunch, Apple's increased market share in the country is a result of how it sells its iPhone there. As there are not yet any Apple stores in India, the only retail outlets people can buy iPhones at are through third-party retailers in the country. Apple has started working with several of these small retailers to help them distribute the iPhone as well as helping them craft amortized payment plans that lets consumers defray the upfront cost of the device. Another significant factor to Apple's Q4 India numbers is the fact that it launched the iTunes store in the country in December.
ComScore: Apple strengthens lead as top US handset maker in early 2013, Android takes a small hit
The latest numbers from ComScore show Apple strengthening its lead as the top US handset maker, with the iPhone nabbing an estimated 37.8 percent of the market as of January 2013. That's a 3.5-point boost from October of last year, putting healthy distance between Cupertino and the number-two smartphone maker, Samsung. That's not to say the Korean giant hasn't grown as well; its estimated 21.4-percent slice of the pie is up a more modest 1.9 points. Apple's growth on the hardware front naturally has implications on the software side, and indeed this is the first time Android took a hit while iOS grew. According to the survey, Google's OS still maintains a healthy 52.3 percent compared to Apple's 37.8, but it's down 1.3 points while iOS saw a small boost. Where does that leave BlackBerry, Windows Phone and the rest of the gang? Pretty far behind -- as you can see for yourself in the chart below the break.
Sony aims for third place in global smartphone popularity contest
Taking a bullish approach to the competitive world of smartphones, Sony's head of mobile told reporters earlier today that the company wants to claim third place. Yep, not first or second (Apple or Samsung, depending on your metric of choice) but the other guy -- enough to make it on the podium. IDC recently ranked Sony in fourth place for the last quarter, claiming 4.5 percent of the mobile market, ahead of ZTE, but behind Huawei and those aforementioned smartphone sovereigns. Kunimasa Suzuki added that the company's plan might involve humbler models pitched at developing nations. Hopefully those cheaper Xperia devices will arrive soon, as Sony's running out of letters. And heck, there's nothing wrong with third place.
Kantar: Android back on top of US smartphone share in January with Sprint's help
Most US smartphone market share estimates last fall saw Apple retake the lead as it rode a wave of iPhone 5 sales. While there was always a question as to how long that trend would last, new data from Kantar Worldpanel supports beliefs that it was really more of a momentary pop. Android reportedly took back the lead at 49.4 percent of American sales between November and January, improving its overall position versus the same month last year. Not that everyone else was necessarily hurting -- iOS still had a 45.9 percent slice of the pie, and the continued Windows Phone 8 rollout took Microsoft up to 3.2 percent. The real wounds were dealt to a pre-transition BlackBerry and Nokia's outgoing Symbian. We seldom get an explanation as to why such shifts take place, but the researchers suggest that a significant chunk of the January switch-up can be assigned to one carrier: Sprint. Its decision to cut the Galaxy S III's contract price to $99 supposedly helped Samsung's flagship climb from 14 percent of Sprint sales in October to 39 percent over the more recent 3-month span. The Galaxy S III didn't play as much of a role elsewhere, Kantar says. Sprint's average contract pricing for Android also dipped to $95 at the same time, helping Samsung alone get 60.3 percent of the network's business as customers snapped up bargains. Big Yellow only played a small part in the overall US market, as you'll see in the detailed charts after the break, but it may have been large enough to tip the balance in OS preferences at the start of 2013.
IDC: Android surged to 69 percent smartphone share in 2012, dipped in Q4
Few would doubt that 2012 was Android's year given how rapidly it grew, but it's good to have some context. IDC is more than willing to oblige. It estimates that Google's OS climbed from 49.2 percent of the smartphone space in 2011 to 68.8 percent in 2012. As we've seen in the past, though, most of that came from customers leaving embattled platforms, including a pre-BB10 BlackBerry and Symbian. Apple reportedly held its ground at 18.8 percent, while Microsoft appears to have turned a corner with Windows Phone by climbing back up to 2.5 percent. The fourth quarter results paint a slightly different picture. Android still had a comfortable 70.1 percent of share in IDC's reckoning, but it took a hit from 75 percent in the third quarter -- similar to what we've seen elsewhere, the iPhone 5 launch helped iOS claw back enough share to hit 21 percent. BlackBerry and Windows Phone weren't quite so rosy, although they also didn't have full quarters with new devices to offer. We'll have to wait for the first quarter of 2013 to finish before we learn of any true shakeups in the status quo.
Canalys: Android was a third of all cellphone shipments in Q4
Despite regularly hearing how mobile platforms fare within the smartphone space, we rarely get a sense of their place in the wider cellphone universe. Canalys is stepping in with some context. It estimates that smartphones represented just under half of the total pie in the fourth quarter, giving bigger companies like Apple and Google some serious clout. Android accounted for 34 percent of all cellphones shipped, driven by Samsung as well as fast-growing Chinese backers like Huawei, Lenovo and ZTE -- all of whom were big reasons why smartphones made up 73 percent of Chinese phone sales in the same period. Apple took a smaller share of the worldwide arena at 11 percent, although it too was riding the Chinese wave to success. Limiting the scope to smartphones tells a mostly familiar tale. Android staked out 69 percent of the market, taking a 5-point hit as iOS jumped to 22 percent through the iPhone 5 launch. Samsung reigned supreme among individual smartphone makers, followed by Apple and Nokia. The rest are once again Chinese, as Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo scooped up the next three spots. Whether or not regular cellphones are included, the message is the same -- if you haven't been building a popular flagship device or catering to buyers in Beijing, you've likely been left out in the cold. [Image credit: Jon Fingas, Flickr]
ComScore: iPhone up to 36 percent of US phone share in December, Android stayed put
There's been indications that Apple staged something of a comeback in the US during the fourth quarter, owing partly to an iPhone 5-related spike. ComScore's smartphone share data for December appears to bear that out. It estimates that the Apple claimed a 36.3 percent slice of the American market in the last month of 2012: that's a noticeable boost from 35 percent in November, and two points up since the iPhone 5's September arrival. Android remained on top at 53.4 percent, but it was once again unusually static, edging down from highs earlier in the year. Other platforms took their usual blows, although there's no doubt some hopes for revival. Just don't anticipate looking for overall cellphone market share. ComScore has switched to focusing on smartphones, and it's telling a different story than we've seen in the past. When only smartphones count, Samsung's December share left it in second place, at 21 percent -- still an increase over prior months, but not as large as Apple's 36.3 percent. The biggest surprise is LG's rise to 7.1 percent and fifth place, quite possibly due to the Optimus G and Nexus 4. Enough shifted that the market may be even less recognizable in 2013, for better or worse.
Canalys: Apple hits 20 percent of PCs through iPad sales, HP up to second place
Canalys is still staking its market share estimates on the view that mobile tablets are as relevant to PC market share as desktops and laptops. If we accept that interpretation, Apple was easily on top of the heap during the fourth quarter. Combining iPads and Macs would give it 27 million computer shipments in the fall, or 20.1 percent of the 134 million computers that left factories -- the first time it would have had more than a fifth of the market. Not that Apple was the only one having a good time, however. HP reportedly took back second place from Lenovo by shipping 15 million PCs and claiming 11 percent of the market, while Samsung stepped into the top five for the first time at 11.7 million PCs and 9 percent share. The upswings may have masked deeper problems. Apple and Samsung benefited from the iPad mini and Galaxy Tab lines, but they, Amazon and other tablet makers were reportedly propping up the market. Canalys doesn't believe Windows 8 or RT moved the needle for demand, noting that laptop shipments were flat year-over-year where tablets surged 75 percent. It was a tough market for most conventional PC builders -- just ask Dell -- and there's no immediate signs that it will be any easier for them in 2013.
