smartphone sales
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Smartphone sales are growing for the first time in two years
Smartphone sales have been stagnating for the last two years as people tire of constantly upgrading their devices and make an effort to hold onto them for longer. The upgrade cycle continues eventually, however, and a new report by data analysis company Strategy Analytics shows that global smartphone shipments grew by 2 percent this quarter compared to last year.
Huawei passes Microsoft as third-largest mobile phone maker
When Microsoft bought Nokia, it inherited a pretty large feature phone business. But that business has shrunk a lot since the purchase, according to Strategy Analytics, and Microsoft hasn't set the smartphone world on fire either. As a result, Huawei just displaced it as the world's third largest mobile phone vendor by shipping 30.6 million phones, nearly 50 percent more than last year. It now holds a 7 percent market share behind Apple (10 percent) and Samsung (20.5 percent). Microsoft sits in fourth place after selling 27.8 million phones, nearly half the 50.3 million devices it sold last year over the same period.
PlayStation helps Sony to big profits, but mobile's struggling
Sony is actually doing all right despite a lot of turmoil, and it's got the PlayStation 4 to thank. This quarter, the company moved 3 million PS4s, bringing total sales of the console to 25.3 million units. Peripheral and software shipments also went up, boosting gaming revenue by 12.1 percent over last year. Despite lower PS3 sales, the division still hit 288.6 billion yen ($2.3 billion) and made around $160 million. Sony recently said that the PS4 is outselling the Xbox One in most of Europe by nearly double, and has outsold its rival considerably overall. It originally expected to sell 16 million PS4s in 2015, but has now bumped that forecast to 16.5 million.
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
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.
iPhone passes BlackBerry in worldwide market share
It's not an earthshaking event, but the occasion should be marked. According to StrategyAnalytics, the iPhone has passed RIM (BlackBerry) as global smartphone shipments reached 77 million units in the 3rd quarter of 2010. According to the report, the iPhone sold 14.1 million phones, while RIM moved 12.1 million. For RIM, the news gets worse, as the company dropped 16.1 percent in sales from the previous quarter. Nokia is still way out in front with 26.5 million sales, but it also dropped more than 3 percent while the iPhone was up 18.3 percent. Recently, RIM CEO Jim Balsillie got into a nasty back and forth with Steve Jobs, after Jobs heaped scorn on the upcoming 7" BlackBerry tablet product as 'dead on arrival.' Balsiille responded that people are 'getting tired of being told what to think by Apple.' [Hat tip to The Loop]
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.
