Samsung Widens Gap Over Apple in Worldwide Smartphone Market

[dmylrea]

That's easy to say when carriers were practically giving Samsung phones away.

What difference does that make? Someone is paying for the phones, either the consumer or the carrier. The numbers are the same.
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In other news... Ford sells more cars than Rolls Royce.

Yes, your precious iPhone is the Rolls Royce of phones. Just as a RR is a ripoff in cars...

Checked the prices of iPhones vs. Samsung's leading phones lately? About the same.

 

[H2SO4]

Doesn't matter without context. You can't compare without factoring price. How many of those units are Samsung's flagships? How many were given away as free upgrades by carriers?

Breaking: Honda sold more cars than BMW. News at 11!

I remember the 3 series, (a premium car), outstripping the Mondeo a few years back. What’s your point?
A snippet for you;
It's a curious phenomenon. The BMW 3-series, the world's best selling premium car, responsible for 35 per cent of all BMW brand sales, easily outsells the similarly sized Ford Mondeo in Europe and Britain. It also outsells all Peugeots, Renaults, Citroëns, Nissans, Toyotas and Hondas in the UK. Yet the BMW is regarded as 'exclusive' while the others are about as upmarket as a bottle of Co-op own-brand lager.

 

[newdeal]

They are going to sell a lot of phones but I said it months ago and I am saying it again now. This is not the time to own Apple stock. It takes an extreme blockbuster in order to get the stock price to go up at this point and even a great quarter causes the stock price to drop. Once iphone sales contract the stock is going to take a real beating

 

[Rogifan]

Yet Samsung's earnings slowed sharply in Q4. Net profit for the quarter fell 40% and Samsung warned of a difficult 2016. Apple's profits were slightly up for the quarter.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/samsung-earnings-slow-sharply-in-4th-quarter-1453942264

But hey let's post some meaningless 3rd analytics firm shipment data that's mostly based on estimates (except for those companies that actually provide shipment figures) and then everyone can spend time theorizing why Apple shipments are down compared to 3rd party estimated of Samsung shipments.

 

[radio893fm]

Disappointing. As much as a blatant copycat firm they are, I do not believe they should be enjoying the success they have been experiencing.

I hate it when cheaters win.

Try to enjoy your iDevices. This is not a soccer games. 2 companies making tons of money and not a dime is going to your account, so don't sweat it.

 

[HangmanSwingset]

Quality over quantity, boys. Nothing to see here, move along.

 

[topdrawer]

my partner and everyone in his company were given samsung phones that they have to use. one one uses them, they instead use forwarding apps on their phones so the company thinks they are using them. plus they only went with samsung to spy on their every move.

 

[Veraxus]

That number will go up even higher this year once Apple removes the headphone jack from the iPhone 7.

My response when I first read the rumors was "Oh, right... they still have those. Huh."

When you can get quality bluetooth headsets for $10-20, I think that's a sign that it's safe to finally retire the headphone jack. I haven't used wired headphones with my Apple devices in years.

 

[Jsameds]

Try to enjoy your iDevices. This is not a soccer games. 2 companies making tons of money and not a dime is going to your account, so don't sweat it.

It's almost as if you're saying I'm not allowed to voice my opinion on the matter.

 

[t0mat0]

Global smartphone profit share. That's another metric beyond just number of handsets sold. That and ASP.
If Apple had 90% of the profits, but the other 10% was from selling 5x the number of handsets at low ASP just to get the low end market, would Apple? They've said before what their criteria for a lower cost phone is.

Currently their low cost phone is the high cost phone on the second hand market. Seems to be doing fairly well!

 

[jdiamond]

Let's see a comparison in revenue instead of units sold...

Not to mention that if the author just read his own table he'd noticed that for all of 2015, apple considerably closed the gap against Samsung versus all of 2014, indicating that year round sales are much stronger, something that imo is harder to do.

 

[samcraig]

See how much money can Control+C/Control+V make? Amazing.

Right - because the newer flagship phones copy Apple how?

That's easy to say when carriers were practically giving Samsung phones away.

Carriers and other 3rd parties have also been giving away/offering great deals on iPhones

Shipped vs Sold.

Not even a story...why bother to even post this stuff?

Samsung does not tell you sold units nor returned/non-sold units from vendors.

Old argument and find it funny this is still brought up. Neither company truly paints the correct picture.

All that being said - Samsung's profits on their mobile division aren't great. They need to fix that...

 

[Tinmania]

I am a happy iPhone 6S Plus owner--along with an ATV, several mac minis, iPad, and a macbook air.

But the way some of you dismiss this news reminds me of the band continuing to play on the Titanic, as if nothing was wrong.

Here is the deal. Samsung has always been about taking on a technology, questionably at first, and then mastering it. Ask Sony, the former premier king of TVs, about that. And then refrigerators. And Microwaves. And, and ,and....

Apple needs to up their game. As much as I love my 6S Plus I know Apple could have done better. And they need to do better. Unfortunately--IN MY OPINION--Tim Cook puts profits above all else so with him in charge I don't see it happening. So keep riding that gravy train, Tim. I only hope you don't turn down a dead-end.



Mike

 

[radio893fm]

It's almost as if you're saying I'm not allowed to voice my opinion on the matter.

Oh nooo, not at all... voice it all you want. Don't take my advice. Sorry for interrupting.

 

[American Hero]

The "low end market" argument isn't even an excuse.

The average consumer gets a two year contract, or now, a payment agreement. They don't pay full price for the device up front. Apple sells $0 devices and $100 devices with two year contracts too, just as the same prices as those low end Samsung phones.

Sure, Samsung's profits probably weren't as high, but in all, both parties have the low end and high end phones when you walk into the cell phone store.

 

[Piggie]

In other news... Ford sells more cars than Rolls Royce.

And look what happened to Rolls Royce. Sold to Volkswagen.

 

[69Mustang]

In other news... Ford sells more cars than Rolls Royce.

I thought MR banned car analogies because we have proven we don't know how to do them correctly. Apple sells commodity product just like Ford. Rolls Royce sells boutique, limited quantity product more akin to Vertu.

Please no more car analogies. For the love of Jeebus, stop.

 

[bladerunner2000]

Since most of Samsung's sales are cheap low-end models, I don't think Apple is too threatened.

With a recession around the corner, you're going to be eating your words.

 

[Hart4God]

The latest numbers from market research firm Strategy Analytics reveal that Samsung increased its lead over Apple as the world's largest smartphone maker, after shipping 81.3 million smartphones in the fourth quarter of the 2015 calendar year. Apple announced earlier this week that it sold a record 74.8 million iPhones during the same three-month period encompassing the busy holiday shopping season.

Global smartphone shipments grew 12 percent annually from 1.28 billion in 2014 to a record 1.44 billion in 2015, according to the data. Samsung and Apple contributed 317.2 million and 192.7 million smartphone sales respectively to that worldwide total, while Huawei, Lenovo-Motorola, and Xiaomi rounded off the top five smartphone makers. All other vendors collectively shipped 637.5 million smartphones in 2015.

Samsung led the fourth quarter with 20.1 percent market share, a slight increase over its 19.6 percent market share in the year-ago quarter. Conversely, Apple's fourth quarter market share was 18.5 percent, a slight decline from its 19.6 percent share in the fourth quarter of 2014. Huawei, Lenovo-Motorola and Xiaomi had market shares of 8.1 percent, 5 percent and 4.8 percent respectively.

In the year-ago quarter, Apple matched Samsung's 74.5 million smartphones shipped on the strength of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, but its South Korean rival has since pulled ahead again. The comparison is largely unbalanced, however, as Samsung sells dozens of different smartphone models worldwide, while Apple currently only sells the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and iPhone 5s.

Apple expects iPhone sales will likely decline in the March quarter, marking the first year-over-year decline since the smartphone was released over eight years ago. The decline will be realized if Apple sells fewer than 61.2 million iPhones this quarter, ending in late March. iPhone growth in the just-announced first fiscal quarter of 2016 was the slowest since the smartphone's introduction in 2007.

Strategy Analytics has also published smartphone data for the Chinese market, where Apple trails closely behind Xiaomi and Huawei.

Article Link: Samsung Widens Gap Over Apple in Worldwide Smartphone Market

 

[ppdix]

The latest numbers from market research firm Strategy Analytics reveal that Samsung increased its lead over Apple as the world's largest smartphone maker, after shipping 81.3 million smartphones in the fourth quarter of the 2015 calendar year. Apple announced earlier this week that it sold a record 74.8 million iPhones during the same three-month period encompassing the busy holiday shopping season.

Global smartphone shipments grew 12 percent annually from 1.28 billion in 2014 to a record 1.44 billion in 2015, according to the data. Samsung and Apple contributed 317.2 million and 192.7 million smartphone sales respectively to that worldwide total, while Huawei, Lenovo-Motorola, and Xiaomi rounded off the top five smartphone makers. All other vendors collectively shipped 637.5 million smartphones in 2015.

Samsung led the fourth quarter with 20.1 percent market share, a slight increase over its 19.6 percent market share in the year-ago quarter. Conversely, Apple's fourth quarter market share was 18.5 percent, a slight decline from its 19.6 percent share in the fourth quarter of 2014. Huawei, Lenovo-Motorola and Xiaomi had market shares of 8.1 percent, 5 percent and 4.8 percent respectively.

In the year-ago quarter, Apple matched Samsung's 74.5 million smartphones shipped on the strength of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, but its South Korean rival has since pulled ahead again. The comparison is largely unbalanced, however, as Samsung sells dozens of different smartphone models worldwide, while Apple currently only sells the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and iPhone 5s.

Apple expects iPhone sales will likely decline in the March quarter, marking the first year-over-year decline since the smartphone was released over eight years ago. The decline will be realized if Apple sells fewer than 61.2 million iPhones this quarter, ending in late March. iPhone growth in the just-announced first fiscal quarter of 2016 was the slowest since the smartphone's introduction in 2007.

Strategy Analytics has also published smartphone data for the Chinese market, where Apple trails closely behind Xiaomi and Huawei.

Article Link: Samsung Widens Gap Over Apple in Worldwide Smartphone Market

 

[Hart4God]

I'm confused. How can anyone who does basic math think that Samsung's lead is "Widening"? 2014: Samsung-317.2 million units sold, minus Apple's 192.7 = Samsung sold 124.5 million more units than Apple. 2015: Samsung-319.7 million units sold, minus Apple's 231.5 = Samsung sold 88.2 million more units than Apple. 124.5 down to 88.2 and the headline says Samsung is pulling away?!?!?

 

[Simplicated]

Samsung warned about a tough 2016 today just as Apple did. Things aren't so shiny.

And they reported a 40% profit decline.

 

[Tycho24]

What difference does that make? Someone is paying for the phones, either the consumer or the carrier. The numbers are the same.
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Are you serious????
It's a cost/profit thing that makes it different.
Look.... think of it this way:
If car company a sold 10 cars for a million dollars each, whereas car company b sold one million cars at $20,000... it's easy to say they (company b) "won".... in the sense that they sold more and made more profit.
But if car company a sold a half a million cars instead of 10, you'd change your mind quickly! Even though they still would have sold half the amount of cars as company b, you'd recognize that they still "won", because of the fact that so much more $ was made.
Does any of this make sense to you at all?????
If Samsung makes a low-end "smart" phone that they literally can sell for $80 & still turn a small profit, should that really count as a sale, when comparing to iPhone sales?
I agree with your "Rolls Royce" statement... that high end phones by Samsung cost similar.... so for a true "apples to apples" comparison, I think we should ONLY count phones at $450 or higher, not any piece of garbage that barely boots.

 

[SusanK]

You forgot: "The iPhone?! What a stupid idea. A touch-phone without a physical keyboard will NEVER sell!" - Steve Ballmer circa ~2007

Cook is Apple's Balmer.

 

[nutmac]

Samsung warned about a tough 2016 today just as Apple did. Things aren't so shiny.

Right because their sales increase is due to push towards lower priced phones. We do not have the final numbers yet, but expect HUGE decline in average selling price for Samsung.