The global mobile OS market shares for Q4 shows a continuing (but diminished) leading share. At the end of last year Android’s unit share reached 51% which is down from about 57% during the third quarter. iOS reached 23%, followed by Symbian at 12%, RIM at 9%, Bada at 2.4%, Windows Phone at 1.6% and … Continue reading “The opportunity cost of Windows Phone”
There is finally enough information to try to give an estimate of the smartphone market as a subset of the overall phone market. The chart to the left shows the overall picture. To sum up: The smartphone market has now reached over 30% of shipments. Non-smart devices are at 69% of total. The individual phone … Continue reading “The Global Smartphone Market Landscape”
In yesterday’s post about the “biggest mobile loser” I covered the exodus of users from non-smart devices in the US and EU5. I also said that what happens in those regions tends to happen in other regions with a time shift. In some regions it happens quicker but in most it happens more slowly. But … Continue reading “Mobile Impossible”
Measurements of “share” are abundant. There is journalistic value in summarizing performance in a single figure of “share” but it usually is a very limiting view. For example in the global mobile phone market there are at least the following measurements available: Share of all handset units sold Share of installed based of handsets (penetration) … Continue reading “A new mobile phone market index”
In the last post, I highlighted the difference between smartphones and non-smart device sales last quarter. The trajectory of share growth for smart devices would appear to have accelerated due to Android. The following charts show the evolution of smartphone vendors and platforms over the last few years. Like in the past, I used color … Continue reading “"Other" vendors sell 10% of Smartphones but 30% of voice-oriented phones”
Operating profits for the eight vendors I track increased at a compounded 25% over three years. As with revenues, the growth is concentrated. The following chart shows operating profit growth across three time frames: three year compounded, year/year and sequential. Loss-making vendors are excluded from this chart. Looking at individual performance, the following chart shows … Continue reading “iPhone share of phone market in Q1: 5% volumes, 20% revenues, 55% profit”
IDC released a new forecast for the worldwide smartphone market which included a long range forecast–all the way to 2015. Most people fixated on the share data in 2015. Not hard to do since whoever wrote the press release highlighted this flashy headline. Putting aside the three significant digits of accuracy on every data point … Continue reading “The controversy of playing it safe: What's IDC's Smartphone Market Message?”
The smartphone market has grown threefold in the span of three years. However, as noted previously, the share of units running a licensed OS has not grown dramatically. The following chart shows the vendors’ shares with the same brown/green dichotomy between licensed and unlicensed OS’s.
[Updated] [ITG sent an explanation of their methodology and there is no indication that the data represents inside information.] ITG Investment Research analyst Matthew Goodman is forecasting monthly sales record for all of Verizon’s devices “based largely on our proprietary daily point-of-sale data from thousands of independent wireless retailers across the US.” Assuming the data … Continue reading “Verizon Strikes Out in Smartphones [Updated]”
The difficulty in analyzing the smartphone market lies in its extremely rapid growth. With the market growing at 90% (and 400% in some areas like China) the forces of demand and supply are disconnected. It’s impossible to discern whether a purchase decision is made from a choice of comparable alternatives or if it’s made from … Continue reading “When markets are supply constrained purchase decisions are not based on product performance”
