Apple Hits New High with 8.8% of Worldwide Mobile Phone Market in 1Q 2012

[kdarling]

Just once I'd like to understand why I get this crap. If we are going to bring up kdarling, ok, let's. His post is what started this particular thread, which I defended because I agreed. Nobody is bugging him about it. In fact, he posts about wholesale prices (not retail) and you offer it as proof about ASP/sales.

I will defend you by saying ASP can refer to either wholesale or retail. The reason why your calculations were being questioned was because you were mixing them up:

The cheapest Samsung smartphone you can buy without contract, anywhere in the world, is $400. Even at this lowest price, 42 million multiplied by 400 is $16.8 billion.

You kept using RETAIL ASPs as your basis for calculating why you thought some analyst sales estimates were bogus. Unlike Apple, Samsung does very few direct sales. Their revenue is based on their WHOLESALE prices, not retail.

It didn't help that you were also way off on the lowest price Samsung smartphone, which retails worldwide at $150, but can be gotten as low as $128. Knowing that the wholesale price is lower, and that it's been reported by some European carriers as their top selling phone in 2011, all helps explain why analysts would come up with their high Samsung numbers.

Make sense? There's nobody attacking you here, btw. Just trying to help you out in your calculations. It's actually quite good that you're doing more than just passively reading numbers and taking them for granted!

 

[orthorim]

They also have more memory, GPS, 3G, and a faster CPU than the first iPhone. Pretty amazing, really. Their primary downside is having only a QVGA screen.



Indeed, carriers have stated that Samsung's more inexpensive models are top-selling favorites in many countries, from India to Greece to Portugal. Considering that they're 1/5 the price of the latest iPhones, it's no wonder.

--

To those attempting to figure out sales, here's some raw facts to help:

• Apple includes high margin iPhone accessories in their iPhone revenue reports.
• Carriers pay about 40% more for iPhones than other smartphones (which is why some world carriers have stopped subsidizing them).
• Apple's average iPhone profit margin is over 40%.
• Samsung's average profit margin on all types of phones is 17%, and low as 5% on dumbphones.

Consider a Galaxy Y (Mini) that retails worldwide for $150 or less without contract. It's quite likely that it costs Samsung about $100 (* including royalties ) to make and they wholesale it for $120.

It would be pretty fair, I think, to assume that sales concentrate towards the lowest end, but are spread out across the whole price range. So if Samsung wholesaled:

52 million dumbphones at $100
20 million smartphones at $120
12 million smartphones at $250
06 million smartphones at $350
04 million smartphones at $450
======================
94 million phones with $15 billion revenue, leaving room for tablet revenue

So yes, the numbers put out by firms more experienced than us, seem quite possible.

(*) Remember, the cheaper the retail price, the lower GSM and other royalties are. The intent is to make phones easier to buy for the world's population, not just the relatively affluent. This FRAND percentage is why Apple is complaining at the high end about royalties. However, at their profit margin they can afford more. It's the whole point of the arrangement.

+1 That's the way I see it too. There's nothing wrong with being the biggest phone maker in the world, and Samsung is currently king of the hill.

Another point of reference you might take into account - Google releases monthly activation numbers by Android version - there we can see that ICS 4.0 sales have now reached 4%.

I think that matches pretty well with Samsung's high end phones making for about 4 - 5 % of their phone sales.

By the way my mom came to visit me here in SE Asia and I went to Tesco to get her the cheapest dumb phone I could find. What I found was a brand new, in package Samsung clone of a Nokia phone (down to the key functions - everything works like on an old Nokia dumbphone, which is good because that's a great layout). Included a power adapter. For... $15. It even had a LED flashlight. I was amazed. The battery lasted the whole 2 weeks she was here.

 

[BaldiMac]

Just once I'd like to understand why I get this crap. If we are going to bring up kdarling, ok, let's. His post is what started this particular thread, which I defended because I agreed. Nobody is bugging him about it. In fact, he posts about wholesale prices (not retail) and you offer it as proof about ASP/sales.

Since I'm not allowed to be an expert, please note the retail bent:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_selling_price
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/averagesellingprice.asp#axzz1tlggDG2S

Last I checked there are no Samsung stores where they receive 100% revenue from sales. VZW, BestBuy, ATT, etc. charge markup when selling a Galaxy. Revenue = sales less distribution channel markup. ASP is a retail definition. Perhaps, it could relate to Samsung's bottom line directly, it does for say, Ebay sellers. Or if markup is zero. But I don't think it does in this particular case of smartphones.

I'm really not trying to be a jerk, here. This is not complex. And yes, I feel the media is wrong well over 50% of the time when refering to numbers, whether accounting or statistics. Probably any other numbers, too.

Again, I didn't bring up retail pricing at all. You are confusing me with a different poster.