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Apple Overtakes Research in Motion in U.S. Smartphone Usage Share
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Nokia is on its last legs. Look at the stock. And RIM isn't doing too well either.
The reason Nokia didn't fare well is because the iphone and other smart phones came out and Nokia had nothing to compete with. They have now done away with symbian and are going to try Windows phone OS as a last resort.
Nothing you've said agrees with multiple studies that say otherwise. I'll wait to call the one study of declining Android market share as conclusive until we have more numbers.
All the geeks I know have got iPhones. My non-geeky friends are all starting to update their dumb phones to Android phones because they don't cost as much as the iPhone.
Especially since Apple has had quarter-to-quarter share drops before. It always depends. If you release something new one quarter, the next quarter have nothing new and just keep pushing out the same model, you might have a month-to-month or quarter-to-quarter drop.
It happens. Heck, this isn't the first time Apple passes by RIM in market share, but RIM picks it back up. They've been trading spots for a while now. Android definitely blew by both of them though.
In the end, all are winners.
The chart macrumors posted is a little bit misleading. Actually Apple overtook RIM (again) already in March 2011. However Apple lost about 1.1% marketshare since then and RIM won 0.2%. Also Apple's marketshare is down since December 2010 by almost 6%.
Also it doesn't look like Android's (worldwide) marketshare will go down in the near future:
Also it doesn't look like Android's (worldwide) marketshare will go down in the near future:
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Blackberry's are nice, my step father is on the second one but they are very different from an iPhone... To me iPhone all the way...
Windows is really doing that badly at the moment, yes, but I think they will improve in the future. One thing to remember is that Microsoft is charging companies for using Android, claiming that Android infringes on their intellectual property. So, for example, HTC pays Microsoft for every Android phone they make. Android is not free to HTC. Rumors are that other companies are doing the same thing.
Microsoft does this, of course, to make Windows Phone look less expensive in comparison. So yes, as many of these also-rans get tired of being me-too copies of everyone else, I expect some of them will try making Windows phones instead of Android phones.
Phone manufacturers are platform agnostic. They couldn't care less what their phones run as long as they are making money. Android depends on such companies, and that's not a very firm foundation.
This truly is the bottom line. Any company that has 20-40% of the smart phone market is laughing all the way to the bank. This is too huge of a market for any one device to take it all. There will be several winners (and a bunch of also-ran losers too) from this market. It won't be a zero-sum game for a very long time.
For someone who has been here since 2007, you sure have a dislike for all things Apple.
Why stick around? Misery breeds company or somesuch?
The most shocking part of all this? I didn't know Palm still existed or that people still used their equipment.
I was the first in my circle of friends and business contacts three years ago to use and iPhone here in Ireland. I would take note the odd time I would see anyone using one. Was at a meeting today with five managers of a company and every one of them had one. They have gotten a huge grip on market here and the UK
The chart in the article shows that Android has a 10.2% market share lead; so yeah, you can infer from the article that Android has a lead.
Nokia sold about 26 million smartphones the last quarter. Let's imagine that only *half* of that people will get a Nokia Windows Phone 7 in Q4/11 then WP7 will be available on about 16 million phones (13 million Nokia + about 3 million HTC/Samsung/LG/Dell/...) per quarter. With these numbers WP7 soon will be the next big competitor to iOS.
Apple already lost against Android in less than 2 years, they have to fight hard to not get in the third or fourth spot now. And I seriously doubt that iOS5 will fix all the bloatware that Apple introduced over the last years (like choppy animations when launching apps, 20% battery drop since 4.3.1, choppy listview when there are lots of elements, etc.), not even to speak that iOS needs a big facelift. Fixing the crappy notification system can just be the first step here.
These charts are telling me that both Apple and RIM are selling significantly more smartphones than any other single vendor. If my calculations are correct, Apple's smartphone marketshare is nearly 2x of Samsung's.
OK, I went back and re-read the linked article. It seems that these charts are for installed user base and not market-share of sales.
Even so, I crunched some numbers (with a few assumptions), and it looks like Apple and RIM have larger smartphone user bases than any other OEM. Also, when looking at the OEM/Andriod combo, both Apple and RIM are approach 2x of any other individual OEM/Android portfolio.
OK, I went back and re-read the linked article. It seems that these charts are for installed user base and not market-share of sales.
Even so, I crunched some numbers (with a few assumptions), and it looks like Apple and RIM have larger smartphone user bases than any other OEM. Also, when looking at the OEM/Andriod combo, both Apple and RIM are approach 2x of any other individual OEM/Android portfolio.
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I think Android's success with consumers will be tested if iPhone 5 rolls out to AT&T and Verizon simultaneously, along with either T-Mobile and/or Sprint. Then we'll know how many simply choose Android because iPhone doesn't exist as a choice for them. The other thing we have to wait for is Apple to have a $100 or lower iphone offering for consumers much like the current 3GS for AT&T. There are a lot of android phones in that segment that can be sold as having most of the same features of the iphone for much less. Some consumers aren't smart enough to look at the monthly costs as compared to the purchase price.
My argument is that your average consumer that isn't tech inclined will always prefer an iPhone over an android phone unless they are finicky about screen size or a hardware keyboard. Most of the people that prefer Android and have well reasoned points for doing so are power users and do not reflect the average consumer. The iphone has a more straight forward app and media purchasing scheme with more options, a more consistent UI and intelligibility to it, more streamlined media playing features, etc. It's just less intimidating.
My argument is that your average consumer that isn't tech inclined will always prefer an iPhone over an android phone unless they are finicky about screen size or a hardware keyboard. Most of the people that prefer Android and have well reasoned points for doing so are power users and do not reflect the average consumer. The iphone has a more straight forward app and media purchasing scheme with more options, a more consistent UI and intelligibility to it, more streamlined media playing features, etc. It's just less intimidating.
In the UK, between March 2010 and March 2011, iOS went from a 39.5% market share to 23%.
Apple are losing market share in Europe in a way that they aren't in the US.
Yes, that's my point. In your case your geek friends went with iPhones, in other cases they go for Android, but they are choosing based on tech features that fit their needs and wants. They do not generally choose based on what's the cheapest.
Your non-geeky friends went with Android because they are available and cheap. That's my point. If all those phone manufacturers switched from Android to Windows, for example, your non-geeky friends would then be buying cheap Windows phones, and the Win Phone market share would jump overnight. And it wouldn't be because of demand for Windows...
Android depends on fickle phone manufacturers for support, and that's a group that is willing to switch any time they feel like it makes business sense.
So Apple continues to grow its marketshare and has a whopping 26% all to themselves while its competitors using Android are splitting up only 36% between ALL of them. And the rest not using Android are still losing marketshare.
Holy crap Apple is killing its competitors!
Holy crap Apple is killing its competitors!