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

[sofila]

i'm impressed with the overall worldwide growth from year to year

[aristotle]

Originally Posted by yakapo

Samsung had a 260% increase in sales? Impressive.

No, a 260% increase in shipments. A slight difference. What apple ships, they sell whereas what Samsung ships does not necessarily "sell" to the consumer.

[mrsir2009]

Bad news, as you’d think with the cheaper iPad Mini that Apple would have GAINED marketshare.

[Eidorian]

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

[spiderman0616]

Originally Posted by appletoandroid

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!

Remind me--what exactly did Samsung do to innovate with the Galaxy Tab? Creating products does not mean you innovated. I could make a cell phone in my garage. It doesn't mean I innovated one, it means I put one together.

[webbuzz]

Originally Posted by hayesk

You forgot "but only Apple reports sales to end users. Shipments are stuck in the retail channel."

Seriously though, if the point of the study is to show Apple is becoming less of a dominant player, both of those comments are legitimate criticisms. Time for the other companies to grow up and stop deceiving us with BS "shipment" numbers.

I couldn't agree with this more. You would be amazed at the excess inventory of handsets and tablets that Best Buy, carriers, and other national retailers have on a quarterly basis.

[SamuraiArtGuy]

It occurs to me that they keep skipping over that salient fact that the tablet computing MARKET is growing, and growing rapidly. So even a slightly smaller piece of a rapidly growing market, still represents real growth for Apple and everyone else involved. A tick down in market share is NOT a sign of Apple's inevitable decline. It just indicates the entry of other players into a market that prior to the release of the iPad, barely existed.

Market share is not everything. No doom for any of the players here. Even Microsoft should survive as long as they keep selling Office. And apple, outside of the release of the iPad Mini, doesn't really care to compete at the bottom, where lot of the new players entered the market, they are more than happy to concede that painfully low-margin (or no margin, hellooooooo Kindle ) space.

[Number 41]

Yeah -- really none of this is surprising. Every tablet maker has copied the major features of the iPad, and now Apple has to do something to differentiate themselves from the pack.

With the way Samsung pushes clone/copycat technology to market, Apple can't afford to sit on a design or OS feature set as long as they could in previous product cycles.

[Newton70]

Who cares how many Samsung shipped, what counts is how many were bought by end users. In that regard, Apple still DOMINATES. IDC is just publishing flub.

[Ryth]

Originally Posted by hayesk

You forgot "but only Apple reports sales to end users. Shipments are stuck in the retail channel."

Seriously though, if the point of the study is to show Apple is becoming less of a dominant player, both of those comments are legitimate criticisms. Time for the other companies to grow up and stop deceiving us with BS "shipment" numbers.

I'd like to see whatever 'commission' on Wall Street require for investors end units 'sold' to customers vs 'shipped'...this shipped vs sold is just too deceiving.

They can still report 'shipped' all they want...but they must also report 'sold' to consumer also.

Shipped is such a deceiving metric...look no further then the HP Touchpad. 750K-Million shipped...20K sold before the firesale.

[TheNextBigThing]

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

[KPOM]

Originally Posted by mrsir2009

Bad news, as you’d think with the cheaper iPad Mini that Apple would have GAINED marketshare.

Not necessarily. Remember, they were entering a crowded market with the iPad mini, and they had supply constraints. What's surprising is how long it took for Android tablets to gain traction. It's been 3 years since the iPad came out, and unlike with the iPhone, Android was already ready.

[flottenheimer]

The reason why Samsungs market share is this high is because they are GIVING AWAY A FREE SAMSUNG TABLET with their very popular LED TVs. And they've been doing so since summer 2012.

[Oletros]

Do people talking about "shipped and not sold" that can be quarter after quarter increasing witthout being sold?

P.S. Apple also report shipped, not sold

[phpmaven]

This must be mostly outside of the US, because I rarely see a non-iPad in the wild. I have dozens of friends with tablets, and I would say maybe 3-4 have non-iPads. I have a hard time believing these numbers, but certainly in the US, it's far higher than 43.6%.

[Oletros]

Originally Posted by appletoandroid

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!

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

[AaronEdwards]

Originally Posted by BC2009

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.

Did you notice that this are worldwide tablet shipments? What you see or not see is, even if you travel around a lot, worthless. (If you travel around a lot it would still only be anecdotal evidence, thus still worthless.)

Edit:

This must be mostly outside of the US, because I rarely see a non-iPad in the wild. I have dozens of friends with tablets, and I would say maybe 3-4 have non-iPads. I have a hard time believing these numbers, but certainly in the US, it's far higher than 43.6%.

More, worthless, anecdotal evidence.

[mrsir2009]

Originally Posted by Oletros

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

Look at his username...

[canman4PM]

Originally Posted by appletoandroid

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!

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.

Oh, by the way, we have 2 Samsung tabs in our family. One was given to us free with my son's cell phone contract. The other was given to us free by our cable company for having our cable/internet/land line service with them. The 2 iPads in the household were both paid for by us. 'Cause we wanted them.

[TrentS]

Originally Posted by appletoandroid

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!

Oops. You meant to say "growth in Samsung's copying....".

[WilliamLondon]

Originally Posted by Ryth

I'd like to see whatever 'commission' on Wall Street require for investors end units 'sold' to customers vs 'shipped'...this shipped vs sold is just too deceiving.

They can still report 'shipped' all they want...but they must also report 'sold' to consumer also.

Shipped is such a deceiving metric...look no further then the HP Touchpad. 750K-Million shipped...20K sold before the firesale.

Yes, companies can be deceptive with these numbers, but the problem is that in a channel model when you ship to a partner who sells to the end user (or perhaps first to a distributor who then sells to a retailer who then sells to an end user), unless you've stipulated they report to you their sales figures (that's not something they are always willing to do, because it's corporate sales data, and sometimes they won't know because they ship it to retailers who don't necessarily report data back to them) you might not have any idea what "sell through" is, but only what "sell in" is (sold vs. shipped). And then there are those companies who report no sales unit figures and these poor analysts are supposed to extrapolate from a lot of other data they must obtain and analyse separately, just so we can all discuss who has the biggest share of the pie.

[kas23]

Originally Posted by KieranDotW

I admit I'm surprised seeing what the iPad mini sales are like

But we don't know the iPad Mini sales numbers, do we? I don't think they commented on that in their earnings call. But I'd assume that the majority of sales are from the iPad Mini.

That said, as for people people saying that only profits count, not marketshare, Apple's profit margins are known to be falling, and we saw this in their earnings report. Profits are still increasing, but not at the alarming rate of the last 1-2 years.

[canman4PM]

Originally Posted by phpmaven

This must be mostly outside of the US, because I rarely see a non-iPad in the wild. I have dozens of friends with tablets, and I would say maybe 3-4 have non-iPads. I have a hard time believing these numbers, but certainly in the US, it's far higher than 43.6%.

My post above: In our family we have 2 iPads, and 2 Samsungs. The former we bought and use and might be seen "in the wild." The latter we were give as part of a cell contract and cable/internet/phone contract and rarely use. One of the kids uses a Samsung for Netflix and Angry Birds. Thats it. They never leave the house.

----------

Originally Posted by mrsir2009

Look at his username...

Troll

[rdowns]

Originally Posted by slffl

Thanks Google, for making operating systems at a loss, and then giving it to foreign companies for free and helping them to dominate American companies. You are true Americans, just like Republicans and neo-cons.

Wow, seriously dude? In your signature, you ask, "Why waste your time posting how much you hate Apple products?" I'd ask you why you waste your time posting this partisan nonsense? Last I looked, Apple was dominating profits in all markets they play in. Android may have more market share but they are hardly dominating Apple.

[Ryth]

Originally Posted by WilliamLondon

Yes, companies can be deceptive with these numbers, but the problem is that in a channel model when you ship to a partner who sells to the end user (or perhaps first to a distributor who then sells to a retailer who then sells to an end user), unless you've stipulated they report to you their sales figures (that's not something they are always willing to do, because it's corporate sales data, and sometimes they won't know because they ship it to retailers who don't necessarily report data back to them) you might not have any idea what "sell through" is, but only what "sell in" is (sold vs. shipped). And then there are those companies who report no sales unit figures and these poor analysts are supposed to extrapolate from a lot of other data they must obtain and analyse separately, just so we can all discuss who has the biggest share of the pie.

I think it needs to be a requirement that the end channels report back to the distributor....

OR

That 'shipped units returned' be reported.