For more analysis of Apple & the industry, join us at ACTIVE 2025.

The iOS App market sales run rate is $4 billion per year

At the 2012 WWDC, Apple released new data concerning its App ecosystem. Namely:

  1. 30 billion apps downloaded to date (excluding updates)
  2. $5 billion paid to app developers
  3. 400 million iTunes accounts

These three data points allow us to update our picture of the app economy. First, the app download rate.

As would be expected from an expanding user base, the app download rate has been increasing. It is now at about 49.5 million apps downloaded every day. The history of this rate is shown in the chart below:

I added the same data for iTunes songs and book downloads for comparison. Note that although music and books are available to the same user base (actually higher due to Macs and iPods which do not run apps,) apps are being downloaded at a far faster rate–at least four times faster.

In terms of total, cumulative downloads, the comparison is even more stark: Continue reading “The iOS App market sales run rate is $4 billion per year”

The Critical Path: The First Year by Horace Dediu — Kickstarter Funding Successful

I extend a heartfelt thank you to all 831 backers of my first Kickstarter financed book project. Thanks to you not only will there be a way to refer to and cite the podcasts but, since the project reached 980% of its target, the project allows me to explore new means of publishing and content production.

Clay Christensen said that a disruptor should be patient for growth but hungry for profit. The Asymco experiment is continuing and is staying true to this principle.

The Critical Path: The First Year by Horace Dediu — Kickstarter.

 

Estimates for Apple's third fiscal 2012 quarter

As the chart below shows, the last quarter (first calendar 2012, second fiscal 2012) was robust with 94% earnings growth and 59% net sales growth. Subject to the usual superlatives, the performance was, again, unexpected by many.

Much of that surprise was due to the underestimation of iPhone sales in China during what is a holiday quarter in that nation. Growth this quarter will be more difficult to estimate. The iPhone is still the most important component but the iPad is becoming increasingly decisive in overall performance. In fact, I’m projecting that the iPad will have the equivalent of 73% of the iPhone revenues this quarter. Continue reading “Estimates for Apple's third fiscal 2012 quarter”

5by5 | The Critical Path #41: Contextual Inquiry

Dan and Horace talk about the distinction between what Facebook is and what its value is perceived to be. We touch on both the opportunities and the challenges for social media and how these are reflected in the IPO. We note how and why Facebook integration in iOS might happen. Horace has a few words about China, WWDC, and the future of apps on TVs. It’s all about context.

5by5 | The Critical Path #41: Contextual Inquiry.

 

 

Asymmetric competition | Horace Dediu | Mobilism 2012 on Vimeo

Here is a video of my presentation at Mobilism 2012 on the story of mobile phone disruption. Thanks to Peter-Paul Koch (aka PPK) for organizing a great event and allowing me to present to such a smart and knowledgeable audience.

Asymmetric competition | Horace Dediu | Mobilism 2012 on Vimeo

Nearly one third of the time is spent in Q&A, which, even if I do say so myself, is the best part.

Also note the exclusive use of a custom iPad app for wireless presentation (pre-release version of the Perspective App.)

Trouble with the robot?

The latest data from comScore showed a few surprises:

New smartphone users dropped to a very low level, below the trend line.

Slightly less than 300k new smartphone users abandoned their feature phones every week during the month. Compared with the 1.5 million per week in November, it’s quite a slowdown.

Penetration growth slowed as a result as well. Only 1.3 points of share were gained by smartphones.

It’s still likely that the penetration will reach 50% by the end of summer this year (as was predicted in 2010).

When looking at the picture above broken out by platforms, we see signs that the slowing in smartphone growth seems to be attributable to a slowing in Android adoption: Continue reading “Trouble with the robot?”

The highway to hell

A glance at Nokia and RIM’s market values today shows that they are both valued below book. With respect to RIM,

The company’s share price has collapsed in the past year, and it is now only valued at about $5.4 billion, down from $84 billion at its peak in 2008. Excluding its cash and the estimated value of its patents, RIM’s device business and its 78 million subscribers around the world are in aggregate worth less than $1 billion to investors.

Analysis: RIM’s new woes seen speeding loss of BlackBerry users – Yahoo! Finance

With respect to Nokia,

MKM: We are downgrading Nokia to Sell from Neutral following our U.S. retail Lumia model checks. We assume no value for the handset business and no value for the roughly four billion euros [about $5 billion] in net cash.

Nokia Suffers From Hang-Ups – Barrons.com

Three years ago the situation was dramatically different. RIM’s share price was six times higher and Nokia’s about four times higher. Here’s what the market looked like in Q1 2010:

This summary view shows individual competitors in the phone market as well as their combined total volumes. The profitability/volumes/pricing can be visualized as well as margins and revenues.

The same visual summary is presented for the first quarters of 2011 and 2012 below: Continue reading “The highway to hell”

5by5 | The Critical Path #40: Awaiting the Big Bang

This week, Horace follows up on his discussion of automobiles and road infrastructure by talking about how road networks were rebuilt in European countries to accommodate cycling. That leads to hints about the challenge of re-building energy infrastructure to support new power train technologies. We talk about RIM’s post-trauma life expectancy. Finally He and Dan also analyze comments made by Tim Cook at the recent D10 conference about Apple TV and disruption of the entertainment industry.

via 5by5 | The Critical Path #40: Awaiting the Big Bang.

Show links:

Beneath contempt: The Apple TV business model

Last year we sold … 2.8 million Apple TVs. This year, just in the first six months of our year we’ve sold 2.7.

Tim Cook at D10 1:45.

I note the “our” in “our year”. This implies fiscal year (that and the fact that he spoke in the past tense before six months had passed in the calendar year.)

Given the public information we have so far, it’s now possible to estimate with some confidence the sales history of Apple TV. The following chart is my estimate. It includes all the known data so far with some interpolations to fill in the gaps.

Assuming average revenues per device of $100, we can get an estimate of about $344 million in Apple TV hardware revenues for calendar 2011. This is not a large amount relative to Apple’s other lines of business. It is, for example, only 14% of the overall Peripherals revenues and only 5% of the iPod.

Continue reading “Beneath contempt: The Apple TV business model”

Post-traumatic life expectancy of phone vendors

“Clearly this stuff isn’t selling,” said Monga [an analyst at Veritas Investments Research in Toronto.]…

RIM took a $485 million pretax charge to write down the value of its PlayBook inventory in December, after shipping just 150,000 of the tablet computers in the quarter. Then in March, the company recorded a $267 million expense for BlackBerry inventory. RIM said at the time that it would stop giving sales and profit guidance because of “ongoing weakness” in the U.S.

via RIM Writedown Risked With $1 Billion Inventory: Corporate Canada – Businessweek.

RIM has just entered what I call the Post-traumatic period of a phone maker’s life. This period is defined as beginning with a loss-making quarter and ending  with the company’s exit from the business. These post-traumatic periods were visualized first here and the pattern was first discussed about a year ago here.

I’ve updated the chart with the current data and added the bar chart below to illustrated the “post-traumatic life expectancy” for the companies shown. Companies still operating are shown with bars without color while companies that have exited are shown with solid color bars. Continue reading “Post-traumatic life expectancy of phone vendors”

Asymco

Asymmetric Competition

Skip to content ↓