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comScore released one of its rare updates to the EU5 (Spain, UK, France, Italy and Germany) smartphone market. Note that the data is claiming to show installed base and not sales in any particular period. What interests me is a comparison or contrast between the European market and the US market.

First, total users.

The EU has about 500 million inhabitants while Europe overall has 731 million. The EU 5 total about 314 million which is very nearly the same as the US (311.6 million). Therefore the EU5 is a good comparable to the US in terms of population. As the graph above shows it’s also remarkably similar in its adoption of smartphones. Note that the scale reflects users and since the populations are very similar then the penetration should also be similar.

Samsung Electronics’ SG&A expenses are curiously high. Consider the following graph:

It shows SG&A as reported by Samsung and Apple over the periods 2010, 2011 and the sum of the first three calendar quarters of 2012. Note that Samsung appears to be spending three times as much as Apple on sales and administration.

The company offers a break-down of these SG&A costs and they are also shown (Apple does not provide a break-down except for advertising in its yearly report). The suspicion that something is not right comes from looking not only at the overall picture but the notion that Transportation, Warranty and “Other” for Samsung are higher than overall SG&A for Apple.

Asymco’s Horace Dediu on Capital Spending’s Transformation of the Electronics Industry – YouTube.

A video of Horace Dediu’s presentation at IBM’s Electronics Global Leadership Forum in Taipei on 23 October 2012. Horace discusses how Apple’s enormous capital spending is reshaping the global supply chain for the industry.

In the parlance of developers Apple keeps “throwing exceptions.” This quarter the iPad surprised with a significant decline in sales growth. I placed a table showing the sales growth for this quarter as well as the previous 22 quarters at the bottom of this post.

Here is a quick review of each line:

1. The iPhone returned to a more customary growth rate (which I rate as Very Good–above 50%). The quarter was bound to be quirky due to it being both a transition quarter and a launch quarter. The launch of the iPhone 5 came quite late but not too late to make a contribution. It was also widely rumored and anticipated so there was slowing of the previous generation product. I expect growth to accelerate further in the last quarter of the year.
2. The Mac turned in a commendable 6% revenue growth (1% unit growth) on the back of the new 15″ Retina screen MacBook. The average sales price increased sequentially and the mix of portables to desktops reached a new high of above 80%. More about the Mac will be written in a future post.

The Critical Path, The First Year is now available on the Asymco Store.

• Including DRM-free PDF and ePub downloadable files.
• The print copies are signed.
• Supplies are limited.

You can order  here: Asymco Store — The Critical Path Book.