That's probably true, and smart business policy, but it's still impressive growth. I'll bet not even Apple expected to have 20-times that number in short order. And none of the competitors in the phone space expected them to do well at all.
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Apple Tops Nokia to Become World's Top Smartphone Vendor
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That's probably true, and smart business policy, but it's still impressive growth. I'll bet not even Apple expected to have 20-times that number in short order. And none of the competitors in the phone space expected them to do well at all.
Yes, I disike the practice no matter who does it. It's the process I find silly, not who does it.
As for Apple reporting shipments and not sales, this is news to me. You usually resort to facts in your posts, so you clearly have something in mind that I'm overlooking. In this week's quarterly results they talked about sales, so I'm not sure what you are referring to.
Not the impression I've gotten based on watching the numbers. Apple talks about how many units of X were *sold*, not *shipped*, and the two have different meanings in industry. Shipped means "sent from the factory to distributors", where sold means "left a store with a sales receipt". (Early in the life span of most recent Apple products, there's not usually a significant difference between the two, though.)
Shipped is an easy number to have accurately, and paints a broad picture, but is easy to manipulate by dumping a load of product into channels. As such, it's really only useful as a measure of the company's confidence in the device.
Sold is tougher to get, because you've got to get sales numbers from retail in a timely manner. Apple has an advantage over most in being able to report this metric, because they make a significant chunk of their own retail sales in their own stores.
Activations is an easy number to get for phones and other devices with cellular contracts, but appears to be easily (and frequently) manipulated by counting the activation of replacement devices.
The most accurate metric is also the one that is never reported, because there hasn't been an easy and reliable way to measure it. That's devices currently in active use. With the launch of iCloud, Apple will actually be able to get that information, so I'd expect to see a report of how many iDevices are accessing iCloud after it's launch.
Absolutely, it's hugely impressive. Not only becoming the #1 leader in the sector by units sold, but to do so with a high-end, high margin device is incredible.
Well the $200 and less nokia's are very popular in Africa/Middle east/Asia...however even Samsung is coming out with good cheap phones now. Oh and many iphones around, however they are much too expensive for most people.
Wow!! Record profits again, announced yesterday, and now this. I can't believe how much better my life has become in 24 hours!!! Just knowing that Apple overtook Nokia gives me goosebumps. I'm feeling a bit giddy, please forgive me. I'm on top of the world.
This a result of more than 4 years of incompetency, disorganization, complacency, arrogance and just plain lack of skills.
Nokia were getting too complacent even before Apple showed up, then they waved off Apple as a non-competitor, big mistake and even a bigger mistake was that they didn't see that touchscreen was the future!
If it wasn't for Apple we'd still be using this... Nokia N87 dual slider, cancelled prototype because of Apple.
Then when it really hit them they scrambled and delivered subpar product after subpar product.
And finally they killed themselves with the February announcement of Symbian's death. Sales dropped sharply, they started to drop before that too cause rumours started going around about Nokia switching to either Android or WP7.
Nokia were getting too complacent even before Apple showed up, then they waved off Apple as a non-competitor, big mistake and even a bigger mistake was that they didn't see that touchscreen was the future!
If it wasn't for Apple we'd still be using this... Nokia N87 dual slider, cancelled prototype because of Apple.
Then when it really hit them they scrambled and delivered subpar product after subpar product.
And finally they killed themselves with the February announcement of Symbian's death. Sales dropped sharply, they started to drop before that too cause rumours started going around about Nokia switching to either Android or WP7.
I think this article has it right on what Nokia should be doing to save their butts:
"Why Nokia is Toast"
I'll quote the last part that sums up what he thinks Nokia should do now (that they have tied their plan with Microsoft though honestly the whole article is worth reading):
"Why Nokia is Toast"
I'll quote the last part that sums up what he thinks Nokia should do now (that they have tied their plan with Microsoft though honestly the whole article is worth reading):
Though the thing is the game has changed. Apple changed it. It's now not a battle of devices, but a battle of eco-systems. This is what Apple changed for the industry.
And you know what ? In the battle for eco-systems, Apple can sell as many devices as they like, other eco-systems are bigger and growing faster.
And exactly which ecosystem is bigger? Which has more apps, media content, 3rd party peripheral/accessory support, developer support, and user base than iOS?
I'll give you, that Android is/was growing faster, but that will change as well.
well that charge shows how explosive the growth of the smartphone market has been and really only Nokia really failed to capitalize on it. Everyone else had a huge amount of growth in the past 2 years compared to Nokia which has a loss.
Also I see Samsung could end up taking top spot from Apple based on it as it is growing faster.
There is still the uncertainty of Google's IP situation (which may affect Android.) This in turn may affect Android-based handsets.
Android is many phones, by many different manufacturers. This article is specifically talking about companies, not devices. Apple now sells more smart phones than any other company.
I would say safe to say not going to happen. It is still at least 12 months away in the best condition but chance are it will be several years before it is all finished.
WP7 is starting to gain some traction so for samsung and others those sales will increase as well.
Agree. Nokia didn't jump on the Android eco-system. HTC, for example, hedged their bets and built Windows and Android devices. Nokia could have built Symbian and Android devices (eco-systems) and still be in better shape than today.
When I began getting cell phones, I only wanted NOKIA, but only the really HARD SHELLED ones that were impossible to hurt when dropped. I was very hard on my phones back then. I loved those things because for me, I just wanted to make a phone call and nothing more. Bought an iPhone in 2007 and it's served me well to this day -- never dropped!
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You write very long sentences without any punctuation. It is pretty hard to read what you write, rant or no rant.
Oh man, I had that phone!!! That was my first cell phone that had mobile web on it.
Actually they never say "shipped"... They say how many were sold and how many are in the channel. This past quarter... 20 million sold, 6 million in the channel. This doesn't mean they shipped 26 million devices either as there were already devices in the channel at the beginning of the quarter.
It's easy to figure that out... They made 13.3 billion on sales of 20.34 million, which gives them an average selling price of $654.
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