Even if you could see Nokia listed individually, it would show that they sold fewer than 12 million smartphones this quarter. That means they had to sell at least 52 million dumbphones to get to that 64 million total.
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Apple's Growth Trails Smartphone Market in 3Q 2013, but Improves in Broader Mobile Phone Market
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Well, if you want to measure the market share you have to count all the phones. No company having the same number is irrelevant for that figure.
To be fair... Comparing an iPhone to a typical (non-flagship) Android phone is like comparing a Porsche to a Toyota. Comparing an iPhone to a $100 off-contract Android phone is more like comparing a Porsche to an ill taken care of early 70's Pinto station wagon.
To drive the point home (pun intended).... a 2014 base model Porsche is about $60,000. While you COULD easily find a nice "other branded" car for 1/2 that price ($30,000), you simply could NOT find a decent new car at less than 1/6 of that price (<$10,000).
So it is with Apple. We all know that the "sold at a loss" Nexus is a viable option at half the retail outright price. However, you can take comparisons of an iPhone to a $100/brand new phone & peddle them elsewhere.... I doubt you'll convince many (if any) here that your son's phone is an even vaguely serious substitute for an iPhone.
Please do paste a link to his prepaid company which charges, as you state, "ZERO monthly bill". That is AMAZING!!! (to the point of being unbelievable).
I wonder how they stay in business, offering this expensive service for nothing???
I think as the economy turns bad again and people are hit with new insurance cost for that Obamacare, people will start taking a much bigger look at smartphone prices as well as other electronics. Apple needs to rethink their tragedy. The new Android 4.0+ phones coming out now are all very good and than we have MS and Nokia growing too. I tried that new Nokia 41mp phone at the MS store a couple of weeks ago and that camera blows my GS4's 13MP camera out of the water. That camera was even better than my Canon 12mp point and shoot, it was just crazy how good that camera was. Apple really needs to up their game.
Even with computers, I got a Dell deal using coupon codes for a 15R laptop with a i5 Haswell cpu and a touch screen for $470. Yeah its not a Mac, but damn its less than half the price and no Mac out there has a touchscreen.
Even with computers, I got a Dell deal using coupon codes for a 15R laptop with a i5 Haswell cpu and a touch screen for $470. Yeah its not a Mac, but damn its less than half the price and no Mac out there has a touchscreen.
But profits are shrinking while others are rising.
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I think it's because they use cheaper, more readily available materials than Apple.
Its an interesting formula, selling to cheap phones for at or below cost. You lose money on every transaction but I guess the hope is to make up the profit on volume.
Margins are dropping. Isn't that all the more reason to focus on the middle and high end? Why sell 50 million phones with barely any profit margin?
They're pretty big around the world. IIRC the US government publicly stated they didn't trust them as they were basically funded by the Chinese government. It turned out that funding was part of some sort of business grant. Some numpty figured it meant that all the phones would be spying. Kind of ironic coming from the US Govt when you think about it though.
Either way, they are all over the place and they actually make pretty high quality devices.
Think of them as the Hanns-G of the mobile market, assuming you've got Hanns-G in the us now?
Margins are dropping no matter what because of increasing competition and price-conscious consumers (who wants to pay $100 for 16 additional gigs anymore?). Apple doesn't have the market to themselves anymore like they did in 2007-2010. I do agree that Apple is following the right strategy by focusing on maximizing profit share. The problem is that strategy has peaked. They will not increase total profits compared to 2011 until they come out with a new product category.
No mobile phone pieces are "more readily available" they are all custom made.
It's call hype. "Oh my god its sold out?! I must have one". People deny it but its the only explanation (other than piss poor suppliers) as to why nobody else has such a high number of production issues as Apple.
Its an interesting formula, selling to cheap phones for at or below cost. You lose money on every transaction but I guess the hope is to make up the profit on volume.
Yap, that is what Samsung, Huawei or LG are doing
The Other Guys
Apple needs to stop using this line "The Other Guys" or the "Competition".
It's time Apple stops insulting the competition based on units sold vs fully using the products; at least not by itself.
Innovate more on the product: regarding iPhone, time for another bold hardware step - I agree TouchID is sweet. I'd love for Apple to beat Samsung to market with curved display - a small strip on the side for icon and banner notifications to use much less battery power.
Apple needs to stop using this line "The Other Guys" or the "Competition".
It's time Apple stops insulting the competition based on units sold vs fully using the products; at least not by itself.
Innovate more on the product: regarding iPhone, time for another bold hardware step - I agree TouchID is sweet. I'd love for Apple to beat Samsung to market with curved display - a small strip on the side for icon and banner notifications to use much less battery power.
That's irrelevant. If it was a "Companies top selling handset" then sure, but its not - its overall mobile phone marketshare for the quarter. Samsung is outselling Apple massively. The fact that they have a range of handsets is irrelevant.
What I would like to see is a sales by price. So all phones < $100, all phones $100 - $200, all phones $200 - $300 etc. It'd be interesting to see the stats.
I think Steve's thoughts there translate perfectly to the iPhone.
What he's saying is that as long as Apple was making a profit and was financially healthy, they could afford to sacrifice some short-term profits in order to spread their products.
He's saying that what went wrong at Apple was that they became greedy - they had an early advantage, and they stubbornly believed their product was so superior that they could demand much higher prices forever. Ultimately, the competition caught up with 'good enough' products for much lower prices, and it destroyed Apple's future in PCs.
There are two ideas of what Apple is:
1. A company which builds the best products it can, or
2. A company which makes as much money as it can.
If you believe that Apple's goal is to make the best products, who cares if their profits fall? So long as they remain healthy, they can afford to lower their prices because it means more people have access to better products. That's the point Steve was getting at; it's not about making obscene profits; the vision was to "make the thing an appliance and get this out there to as many people as possible"
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If anything, Steve's comments are even more fitting of the smartphone market. The global technology industry is much more developed than it was in the 90s, and the so-called 'race to the bottom' has happened much faster than it did in the PC industry as a result.
Look at the iPhone's market share since launch to see just how fitting those comments are. The iPhone initially took the world by storm, and early Android devices (like the G1 and G2) couldn't hope to compete. Apple stuck to its guns, insisting that their product was superior and they could demand much higher prices for it, which left an enormous space for the competition to enter. Apple made ridiculous profits for a number of years, but now their profits and market-share (especially outside the USA) are falling.
They went for profits instead of market-share, and it could very well have cost them their future once again.
As people whined about how long it takes Apple to release new and innovative products, I always appreciated that their objective was to be the biggest or to sell the most but rather, to make an effort to build products that delivers the qualities that Apple customers expect. I think this statement pretty much sums it up:
Steve Jobs said:
Spot on. Who the hell wants to spends a lot, sell a lot and make a thin profit.
Look at those smartphone numbers again - Samsung are outselling Apple almost 3-to-1.
That means Samsung can afford to have 1/3 of the margin Apple has and make the same massive profits.
Let's ignore business for a moment; wouldn't humanity benefit immensely from more people having access to better technology?
That was Apple's original vision. Not to make massive profits, but to make great products that change the world and to get those products in to the hands of as many people as possible.
Today, the company executing that vision is Samsung. Apple seems to be fixated on profit, despite being extremely financially secure already.
What's the point of getting the device to the hands of people if the device itself sucks? The way to get 3x the sales of iPhones, android phone manufacturers are releasing crappy phones that are loaded with bloatware and are hard to use. Despite only having 1/3 of the devices out in the wild, iOS still makes up more internet usage than all android devices combined.
There will always be people that look at price as the only indicator of value.....
However, the fact that a month after launch you still have a hard time finding an iPhone 5S in stores would suggest that there are enough people that look at other value indicators as well.
Some people don't like to start a sentence with "Yeah its not a Mac, But"
Yes, but Apple is not the most profitable smartphone manufacturer anymore and with margins going down it will be less and less profitable, so they need to increase market share to compensate. But it looks like out of all smartphone manufacturers, Apple is the only one losing market share.