Apple's Share of Worldwide Tablet Shipments Slips to 43.6% in 4Q 2012

canman4PM said:

Even if we assume Apple and Samsung sold every unit quoted in the article as "Shipped", Apple sold/shipped 22.9M units to Samsung's 7.9M units. People sure did vote with their money.

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I don't see anyone disputing that Apple sold more tablets that Samsung.

But remember there was a time when Apple sold more smart phones than Samsung, but Samsung had a higher growth. You do remember what the next step was? Samsung started to outsell Apple in total number of smart phones sold.

There was a time when Apple totally dominated the tablet market, now Samsung is growing fast. There's nothing that indicates that the next step will be in any way different from what happened in the smart phone market.

This, btw, is the reason why AAPL is going down recently. The market doesn't care about the last quarter. It cares about the next quarter and the quarter after that, and so on.

dazed said:

Samsung has done an impressive job chipping away at Apples cool factor. Of course Apple has had many stumbles recently which didnt help.

I still like my ipad, no desire for anything else at moment

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Samsung has made my ipad look cooler in my eyes. They made very, very ugly designs with their tablets which make the iPads seem a lot better.

Zunjine said:

People need to be very careful with these sorts of stats.

If I sell one unit in 2012 and four in 2013 I've had a 400% SURGE in growth! If I sell 4 million in 2012 and 6 million in 2013 I've only grown by a mere 50%.

If you look at actual increase in units shipped, Apple has grown faster than anyone else by a good deal.

The point is that the market leader will always lose market share as a market matures - this is inevitable.

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But this is bringing facts and reason into the discussion when really what the media (and some here) want to do is spin it as pro-Samsung, Samsung innovating, Apple coasting, etc.

Still Arguing Marketshare, Why?

Time to shift the conversation. Apple is no longer in danger of going out of business like is was in the 90's This was Steve's greatest accomplishment. Apple now has the ecosystem to carry it long into the future. Let others obsess with profits and marketshare. We want continued great design and polished innovation. The rest will take of itself.

appletoandroid said:

Is this surprising? Lack of innovation leads to loss in marketshare. And people wonder why AAPL is falling. Growth in Samsung's innovations is remarkable, as they doubled their marketshare. I've been saying it all along, the end is near for Apple products, consumers are voting w/ their money!

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Is that why Apple just had the most profitable quarter by ANY business EVER?

Zunjine said:

People need to be very careful with these sorts of stats.

If I sell one unit in 2012 and four in 2013 I've had a 400% SURGE in growth! If I sell 4 million in 2012 and 6 million in 2013 I've only grown by a mere 50%.

If you look at actual increase in units shipped, Apple has grown faster than anyone else by a good deal.

The point is that the market leader will always lose market share as a market matures - this is inevitable.

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Apple sold 7.4 million more tablets in 4Q12 than in 4Q11.
Samsung sold 5.7 million more tablets in 4Q12 than in 4Q11.

That's 1.7 million less.

I wouldn't take solace in those numbers.

Edit:
Sure, those numbers aren't as bad as the 3Q12 vs 3Q11 numbers:

Apple sold 2.9 million more tablets in 3Q12 than in 3Q11.
Samsung sold 3.9 million more tablets in 3Q12 than in 3Q11.

I'm guessing the fact that Apple decided to follow Samsung, etc and release the iPad mini helped.

math

CHRIST DENN said:

Samsung got a whooping 263.0% 4Q12/4Q11 growth. That's impressive!

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If my company started selling tablets, and one quarter has a 0.1% market share, and the next quarter has 1%, I would have increased my marketshare 1,000%! OMG! [head explodes]

Eventually there will be a olpc type deal to ship something like 50 million super-cheap Android tablets to 3rd world schools, and Apple's marketshare will absolutely plummet, even though they will have sold more iPad y/y. This has absolutely no bearing on Apple's business. They're not going after the "cheapest tablet" market, they've made that very clear.

Until Apple sells fewer iPads from one year to the next, they're still increasing their sales, and that's a very good thing. All this talk of Apple's demise because they're losing marketshare to cheap tablets is 1,000% hype.

AaronEdwards said:

I don't see anyone disputing that Apple sold more tablets that Samsung.

But remember there was a time when Apple sold more smart phones than Samsung, but Samsung had a higher growth. You do remember what the next step was? Samsung started to outsell Apple in total number of smart phones sold.

There was a time when Apple totally dominated the tablet market, now Samsung is growing fast. There's nothing that indicates that the next step will be in any way different from what happened in the smart phone market.

This, btw, is the reason why AAPL is going down recently. The market doesn't care about the last quarter. It cares about the next quarter and the quarter after that, and so on.

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Apple proved there was a huge market for smart phones. Then Samsung and others came in and, after a few false starts, started to make decent smart phones.

Apple proved there was a huge market for tablets. Samsung and others want a piece of the action there, too, and they'll get it.

How does Apple keep Samsung and others out of the market? Lawsuits? Is that what you want Apple to do? How does Apple keep Samsung's quality down?

A complete overhaul of iOS won't restore Apple's marketshare. It would anger some of Apple's faithful, and would not bring Samsung's faithful on board.

It's time for Apple to forge a market for a new kind of device (or a kind of device that exists, but hasn't really caught on, except with a few geeks [we know who we are]). But what will that market be? Smart TV? Something else?

When I say "it's time", I don't mean tomorrow. It could be later this year, or next year. But soon. Then (hopefully for Apple) the cycle will start again.

WOW, I am shocked. I read about Apple's market share slipping to 50% before the Mini, but I thought afterwards there would be no competition. Guess Apple should have put that Retina Display THIS year. As of right now, Apple ain't got NO chance of reclaiming 20% worldwide market share in terms of smartphones, but if tablets go the way of the iPhone, than this is not good news.

Ryth said:

But hey...lets continue to believe reporting that is based on guesswork.

How standards have fallen.

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The guesswork includes Apple. As far as I can tell they still include third party retailer inventory in their sales figures. It's more ambiguous in some ways as you have direct sales mixed with what would otherwise be considered shipments. If these don't sell as quickly, they affect the way numbers look for the next quarter, assuming that next quarter doesn't have a replacement product that generates large orders.

Eidorian said:

I think it is a good bet to stick with ASUS. I hope to get my next motherboard from them too.

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The only complaints I ever read about them are regarding warranty service. Other than that they seem to make good things.

doelcm82 said:

Apple proved there was a huge market for smart phones. Then Samsung and others came in and, after a few false starts, started to make decent smart phones.

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It started prior to Apple. There was a huge market for Blackberries. It just wasn't to the point where seemingly everyone owned one. Almost everyone I knew personally had one. With the iphone it expanded to the point of everyone I saw anywhere for a while.

Not surprised at all. Samsung has had some decent tablet designs already, and a lot of grown has come from the new Windows 8 market. Lenovo probably has the "best" designs at the moment (the Helix looks great... would be better with a ULV proc tho.)

Inking is great on anything with a wacom digitizer right now... inking as an input method really has come of age; just really good recognition of even crappy handwriting. The new Z2760 atom is a decent sweetspot for power (doesn't lag like RT-ARM) and battery consumption (Ipad like length.) The current gen mobile i-core procs aren't ULV but the new ones will be this year and will be ideal for the tablet format.

Its also nice running whatever browser plugins I want, or full office.

Mostly I like a tablet with a real browser that doesn't crash to desktop, like my ipad 1 and 3 (abeit less) do (and yeah, check out the 70+ page threads, and yes, I've done all the fixes, including clearing browser data, disabling icloud and full resets.)

When someone suggests a full reset as a fix you pretty much know they have no clue whats broken and/or don't intend to try to actually fix it. If Apple can't get memory management/whatever right on the Ipad for something as fundamental as web browsing, what can they get right?

This is one of the reasons I'm not surprised why there is a lot of growth in the "not Ipad" segment of the tablet market.

AaronEdwards said:

I don't see anyone disputing that Apple sold more tablets that Samsung.

But remember there was a time when Apple sold more smart phones than Samsung, but Samsung had a higher growth. You do remember what the next step was? Samsung started to outsell Apple in total number of smart phones sold.

There was a time when Apple totally dominated the tablet market, now Samsung is growing fast. There's nothing that indicates that the next step will be in any way different from what happened in the smart phone market.

This, btw, is the reason why AAPL is going down recently. The market doesn't care about the last quarter. It cares about the next quarter and the quarter after that, and so on.

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It seems to me that Apple has rarely been worried about competitors outselling their products. They have never tried to sell everything to everybody. If they did, they'd sell purpose-made cheap iPhones, iPads and Netbooks (remember those). They'd compete with the HP all-in-one computer with a $700 iMac. Etc. Seems to me they've been pretty successful doing it their way. They've never been about creating "loss leader" type products that they loose money or break even on, just for the sake of a fairly useless stat called "market share." Ask GM how having the biggest market share in the 70's and 80's has helped them in the profitability stat over the years. You never see Apple products in liquidation type stores. I see lots of Pandigital, Polaroid and other brands I have never heard of selling their tabs there for $80 and less. Each sale of one of these pieces of crap erodes Apple's market share, but was purchased by an individual who was never going to buy an iPad anyway. Even if the iPad was the only tablet out there. Apple's "market share" of my household is 50%; but if they weren't "free", I would never have got those 2 Samsung Tabs. They're hardly used. We paid for the 2 iPads we own. Given the choice, I would have rather had a discount rather than the Samsungs tabs.

As for AAPL's share price, it is up or down depending on whether more people want to sell their shares today than want to buy, or vice versa. The reason for that is varied and has as much to do with psychology as it does company performance. It seems to me, for the past 5-6 years, after damn near every Apple event, their shares go down because some "experts" predict the event failed and the new product/upgrade was weak. Then the sales figures come in.

McDonald's has higher share of visitors than El Buli, I'd rather eat at El Buli. Britney Spears sells more albums than Maria Callas, I'd rather listen to Callas.



Bottom line. Samsung is Britney and McDonald's, Apple is Callas and El Bulli.

1. Shipments =/ sold units

2. There are no numbers of sold Amazon tablets.

The fan has been hit. While they are still a pretty big leader google is scary for sure.

JackieTreehorn said:

McDonald's has higher share of visitors than El Buli, I'd rather eat at El Buli. Britney Spears sells more albums than Maria Callas, I'd rather listen to Callas.



Bottom line. Samsung is Britney and McDonald's, Apple is Callas and El Bulli.

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That may be good for Some. My guess is corporations would prefer to sell 100 billion of something (McDonalds) vs a significantly smaller number of El Bulli's.

canman4PM said:

It seems to me that Apple has rarely been worried about competitors outselling their products. They have never tried to sell everything to everybody. If they did, they'd sell purpose-made cheap iPhones, iPads and Netbooks (remember those). They'd compete with the HP all-in-one computer with a $700 iMac. Etc. Seems to me they've been pretty successful doing it their way. They've never been about creating "loss leader" type products that they loose money or break even on, just for the sake of a fairly useless stat called "market share." Ask GM how having the biggest market share in the 70's and 80's has helped them in the profitability stat over the years. You never see Apple products in liquidation type stores. I see lots of Pandigital, Polaroid and other brands I have never heard of selling their tabs there for $80 and less. Each sale of one of these pieces of crap erodes Apple's market share, but was purchased by an individual who was never going to buy an iPad anyway. Even if the iPad was the only tablet out there. Apple's "market share" of my household is 50%; but if they weren't "free", I would never have got those 2 Samsung Tabs. They're hardly used. We paid for the 2 iPads we own. Given the choice, I would have rather had a discount rather than the Samsungs tabs.

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I really don't care for anecdotal evidence.

Anyway, Apple has been successful since the iPod. But right now, the future for Apple looks more like the 90's than the 00's.

As for AAPL's share price, it is up or down depending on whether more people want to sell their shares today than want to buy, or vice versa. The reason for that is varied and has as much to do with psychology as it does company performance. It seems to me, for the past 5-6 years, after damn near every Apple event, their shares go down because some "experts" predict the event failed and the new product/upgrade was weak. Then the sales figures come in.

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People selling or buying Apple stocks won't move the stock as much as when institutions, hedge funds, etc do. And the latter care about the future more than the last report.

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JackieTreehorn said:

McDonald's has higher share of visitors than El Buli, I'd rather eat at El Buli. Britney Spears sells more albums than Maria Callas, I'd rather listen to Callas.



Bottom line. Samsung is Britney and McDonald's, Apple is Callas and El Bulli.

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Fiat owns Ferrarri.
Volkswagen owns Lamborghini.

BC2009 said:

IDC exaggerating Samsung's performance again in their estimates.

Never mind what Apple did, Asus makes the Nexus 7. Amazon makes the Kindle tablets. Now ask yourself how many Galaxy Tabs you have seen in people's hands compared to Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire. Galaxy Tabs sell at two and three times the price of the Nexus 7 and Kindle.

iPads are everywhere. I went to Disneyland for New Years and people were standing in line for rides playing with iPads. It floored me. I asked one couple about it and they were from Australia. They said it was their cheapest way to get internet connectivity. Another couple I saw did not speak English -- they were from China and their iPad min was displaying everything in Chinese.

I did not see any Kindles or Nexus 7 tablets at Disneyland - and certainly no Galaxy Tabs. This could have been because Kindle and Nexus 7 simply don't have cellular connectivity at the low-end prices at which they normally sell, but I have seen plenty of those tablets out and about in other places since people use them for reading. I never see a Galaxy Tab. In fact, the last time I saw a Galaxy Tab that was not on a store shelf or being offered as a free promotion with a Samsung TV was over a year ago.

There is no way Galaxy Tab is out-selling the Nexus 7 or Amazon Kindle Fire. These estimates for Samsung are insanely high. Even Android fans attest to the Nexus 7 being the most popular Android tablet.

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Why bother with facts when we can count on your trip to disneyland to tell us what the most popular devices are...

Oletros said:

You forgot the parodytag, because it is parody, isn't it?

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I think you mean satire.

AaronEdwards said:

I really don't care for anecdotal evidence.

Anyway, Apple has been successful since the iPod. But right now, the future for Apple looks more like the 90's than the 00's.



People selling or buying Apple stocks won't move the stock as much as when institutions, hedge funds, etc do. And the latter care about the future more than the last report.

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Fiat owns Ferrarri.
Volkswagen owns Lamborghini.

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Fine, you don't like anecdotal evidence. At least it's evidence of some kind. Go look up earnings and profits for both companies, if you'd rather. 'Nuff said.

Those institutions and hedge funds are run by the same "experts." History has shown said experts to create housing bubbles, stock market bubbles, sub-prime mortgage crises, etc. Anyone with the appropriate degree is an "expert." The ability to regurgitate what a professor tells you for 4 years does not prove one can think, analyze and make good decisions. History has shown that psychology, more than fact, has had the biggest effect on the Market and it's up/downswings.

You want an example, look up the .com bubble of the 90s - stock market prices inflated by demand for the company's stock, not it's product. Stock prices soaring into stupidity on companies that had yet to actually sell anything. There are more.

canman4PM said:

Fine, you don't like anecdotal evidence. At least it's evidence of some kind. Go look up earnings and profits for both companies, if you'd rather. 'Nuff said.

Those institutions and hedge funds are run by the same "experts." History has shown said experts to create housing bubbles, stock market bubbles, sub-prime mortgage crises, etc. Anyone with the appropriate degree is an "expert." The ability to regurgitate what a professor tells you for 4 years does not prove one can think, analyze and make good decisions. History has shown that psychology, more than fact, has had the biggest effect on the Market and it's up/downswings.

You want an example, look up the .com bubble of the 90s - stock market prices inflated by demand for the company's stock, not it's product. Stock prices soaring into stupidity on companies that had yet to actually sell anything. There are more.

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You don't seem to grasp the meaning of anecdotal evidence.

I look outside and it snows. I call a friend, who lives a mile away, and ask him to look outside and tell me if it's snowing. He tells me it snowing.

Clearly it's snowing everywhere.

Again I see people trying rationalize/marginalize/etc

At the end of the day here's what this tells us. Apple sells a crapload of tablets. And Samsung is doing well and is growing their customer base.

All the needless back and forth beyond that is funny.

Down go the shares again!

Profits are great for investors or corporate owners, but pretty meh for the consumer/user. An $800 wifi arm-processor ipad? lulz.

The innovation in ipads is basically stagnant. The mini came out because the Kindle Fire proved a successful market for that size format. The ipad doesn't have an active digitizer. Is still running a remarkably limited OS.

There are new products with clear feature advantages. You can expect to see quicker grown by the companies that provide a more complete feature set.

Batavian said:

That may be good for Some. My guess is corporations would prefer to sell 100 billion of something (McDonalds) vs a significantly smaller number of El Bulli's.

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Um...the real factual information is that El Bulli's (Apple) is not only taking in the biggest profits, it's also selling more then McDonalds (Samsung)

The different here is that McDonald's (Samsung) has cooked up millions of burgers and no one is buying them...yet some magazines are saying that everyone loves McDonalds because they cooked up all this food...just not saying who bought the food or who they sold it to.

Corporations would kill for the best of both worlds...which is high margins, top revenues and lots of sales and Apple has all 3.

Samsung doesn't have any of those...just lots of 'shipped' units =/ sales.