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If it wasn't for Apple we'd still be using this... Nokia N87 dual slider, cancelled prototype because of Apple.

nokia_n87_c_prototype.jpg

Wow - those buttons - I get confused just looking at them... :eek:
 
I love my iPhone 3GS and will buy the next release this year...unless the Droids are far better (price, features, cell carrier availability, etc.) this Fall.

But folks...come on....the iPhone is not a phone and never was. It's a handheld computer that just also happens to act as a phone. :) Ditto for the Blackberry and Droid.

I can't speak for the other manufacturers out there.

All this being said above, the true cell phones out there have been quickly losing to "smart" phones over the past 2 years.

A reason why no single Droid manufacturer has surpassed Apple in sales is likely due to iPhone being out for 4+ years while Droids have been out for 2 (if that).
 
Good for Apple, they never cease to amaze us with these great feats

Now Nokia needs to step it up a bit and innovate for them to be competitive again
 
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.
Image

Clearly you have no idea about Nokia products. Nokia been pumping out concepts and eventually cancelling them way before iPhone came. Nokia didn't cancel any phones because of iPhone, they cancelled them because they didn't fit in. Do you know how many phone Nokia cancels each and every year? And that's not because of Apple.

And now that I've read the article, it's smartphone shipments. Given that Nokia has tons of feature phones, they still remain as #1 mobile phone company. Not smartphone though, that is because Symbian was scrapped from smartphones and N8 was the last smartphone. There were no new smartphones after N8, except E7 which is the same thing. I would like to see statistics of total shipments of phones.

But anyway, congrats to Apple. This was inevitable I guess, given that Nokia is completely changing their strategy.
 
I don't know it as a fact, it's just logical. Not everyone who sells iPhones are actual Apple partners. I have seen quite a few flea market sellers with good iPhone stock. I very much doubt they had any ties to Apple and are simply 3rd party resellers being counted as "full sales" once the phones are shipped to them.

It's also not a sure thing that every carrier reports back to Apple. We'd have to see the actual agreements to know. Anyway, it would be definately hard for Apple to have numbers from every reseller out there. kdarling isn't wrong, in all logic.


As it is for every manufacturer. Except in Apple's case, there are very few sales outside the major partners, who do report back to Apple. In the case of Nokia, there are probably tons of unsold phones at Bob's Emporium, or even floating through the channel. The point is, whatever phenomenum is causing over-reporting of channel sales, the phenomenum is going to be much less signficant for an extremely hot product than more a slower-moving one. So, relative to Nokia, your observation leads to the fact that Apple is probably doing better than has been reported.
 
correct. In financial reporting, Sales is done in the context of the reporting entity (How much Apple sold, not how much reached real users). In reporting, Shipped is normally used for sold (rather than "leaving a best-buy store with a receipt").

The principle is that of ownership and balancing your books. From a reporting perspective I believe this is how it works: either the Seller (apple) has ownership of a physical product or the Buyer (best-buy/att/joe smith). Once Apple relinquishes ownership of a product (usually when it reaches the destination point and signed-off), there must be a balancing entry on the books, otherwise you have something un-accounted for... therefore you place a entry under Sales. (on the receiver's books you also must have a new entry).
I think this is common practice for most cases... it get's tricky when you deal with consignment and services.

Weather it gets out of Best-buy inventory to a real customer or if Best-buy actually *pays* for the product is different matter (from a financial reporting perspective). (paying is more an A/R thing).

Well, channel-stuffing is illegal. It's perfectly okay to place inventory
in the channel, but it's fraudulent to account for that as a sale if it's not likely to be sold. I'm not exactly sure what is considered "over the line", but it's likely that Apple is erring on the conservative side, because being forced by the SEC to restate earnings due to channel-stuffing would obliterate Apple stock value.
 
What is considered a "smartphone"? Nokia has been making cellular phones from awhile, and I have always thought their designs looked pretty smart...

Would the 5160 be considered a "smartphone"?

1oiejykv.jpg


This was my first cellphone, I had this one in 1998.
 
Here are the facts,

5.9 million in the channel at the end of the quarter (EOQ)
5.2 million in the channel at the beginning of the quarter (BOQ)
20.34 million units "moved"

If you want to assume "moved" means shipped, then

Sold = (Shipped - EOQ) + BOQ
Sold = (20.34M - 5.9M) + 5.2M
Sold = (14.44M) + 5.2M
Sold = 19.64M

If you want to assume "moved" means sold, then

Shipped = Sold + (EOQ - BOQ)
Shipped = 20.34M + (5.9M - 5.2M)
Shipped = 20.34M + (0.7M)
Shipped = 21.04M

Again those are only Apple's channels. As soon as it leaves their warehouse they have no way to count them. They could be in inventory at one of the carriers.

Fact that Apple is only telling you those numbers means that they are hiding the real ones. Apple could get a pretty good count on sells by just looking at activation on iTunes. Have the IMEI numbers counted on first activation just like Google does with Android phones and you can get an exact number.
For example Google can release an exact number for Google handsets and I am willing bet they could give an exact break down by model if they wanted to.

Apple could do it as well if they choose. Now yes your numbers can give a rough idea but not exact and have a lot of room to play in them. They only can get what carrier choose to report back to them.

Knight and Kdarling are right.

Either way the numbers are impressive. No one is discounting that. 20 million iPhones is very impressive. It was only a few years ago that 20 mil total number of smart phones sold in a year was though to be insane. now there are 20 mil smart phones phones activated in under a month (android apple, BB, Palm, WP7 ect)


Well, channel-stuffing is illegal. It's perfectly okay to place inventory
in the channel, but it's fraudulent to account for that as a sale if it's not likely to be sold. I'm not exactly sure what is considered "over the line", but it's likely that Apple is erring on the conservative side, because being forced by the SEC to restate earnings due to channel-stuffing would obliterate Apple stock value.

As soon as the disturber pays Apple for the phones they can count it as sold. Apple has their money. Does not matter if it is sitting in disturbers inventory. It been sold as far as Apple is concerned.
Now if it is in Apple warehouse, and said company promised to buy them but has not taken delivory it is still in the channel and can not stuff it.
 
Well of course, but those are still "sales"... it isn't stock waiting to be returned to Apple if it doesn't sell....
Here are the facts,

5.9 million in the channel at the end of the quarter (EOQ)
5.2 million in the channel at the beginning of the quarter (BOQ)
20.34 million units "moved"

If you want to assume "moved" means shipped, then

Sold = (Shipped - EOQ) + BOQ
Sold = (20.34M - 5.9M) + 5.2M
Sold = (14.44M) + 5.2M
Sold = 19.64M

If you want to assume "moved" means sold, then

Shipped = Sold + (EOQ - BOQ)
Shipped = 20.34M + (5.9M - 5.2M)
Shipped = 20.34M + (0.7M)
Shipped = 21.04M

But they did not say moved they said sold. From the transcript of the earnings call:

I'd now like to turn to the iPhone. We were thrilled to sell a record 20.3 million iPhones compared to 8.4 million in the previous June quarter. This represents 142% year-over-year growth, which is more than double IDC's latest published estimate of 67% growth for the global smartphone market overall in the June quarter. Recognized revenue from iPhone handset and accessory sales were $13.3 billion during the quarter compared to $5.3 billion in the year ago quarter, an increase of 150%. We continue to experience very strong year-over-year iPhone sales growth in all of our operating segments. iPhone sales momentum in the Asia-Pacific region was particularly robust with sales almost quadrupling year-over-year. We continue to increase our overall iPhone manufacturing capacity in the quarter. We were pleased to launch a number of new carrier relationships. And by the end of the quarter, iPhone was available through 228 carriers in 105 countries, compared to 186 carriers in 90 countries as of the end of the March quarter. We ended the quarter with about 5.9 million iPhones in channel inventory, a sequential increase of about 700,000 to support strong iPhone demand, carrier addition and expanded distribution. We remained within our target range of 4 to 6 weeks of iPhone channel inventory.

From the report itself:

The Company sold 20.34 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 142 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 9.25 million iPads during the quarter, a 183 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 3.95 million Macs during the quarter, a 14 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 7.54 million iPods, a 20 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/07/19Apple-Reports-Third-Quarter-Results.html

Apple is not playing the same game as everyone else because they do not beed to manipulate their numbers to keep the shareholders from bailing. I think it means exactly what it says. At the start of the quarter they had 5.2 million iPhones in the channel, during the quarter 20.34million iPhones moved through the channel and went to consumers, and at the end of the quarter they had 5.9million iPhones in the channel.

It only seems confusing because companies like Samsung and Motorola manipulate their numbers so much, it is hard to tell what it is going on.


Apple is not the reason behind this.

I am sure Apple has nothing to do with Apple becoming the number 1 smartphone vendor in the world.
 
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So if Apple was not successful, they would still be number one?

What I am saying is that they would be successful, but not number one, if they hadn't been given the spot.

Also, Samsung still has not reported. Apple may be number two, in fact.
 
Not surprising.

Apple changed the face of mobile in 2007. With what we're seeing now, however, they actually changed tech itself as we know it - new distribution models, breathing new life into software-as-commodity, etc. This isn't just about mobile. The iPad is bringing us into a new phase of computing. The entire game has changed thanks to Apple.

Reason: different thinking. The user is no longer regarded as an extension of the device. The device is becoming an extension of the user. A few players are still having a difficult time with this concept.

"Tech" changed long before the launch of the iPhone, in fact multi-sided platforms have ruled technology for decades, with the effects of digitalization being almost as old. Surely one can still talk about the emergence of a post-pc paradigm, in which Apple has a leading role, but lets stay true to history, shall we?

One thing is certain though, we live in an exciting age. Now with Apps as an emerging industry asset it will definitely be interesting to see where the evolution of technology takes us next. By the looks of it Apps alone wont be able to provide for sustainable competitive advantage, thus, the battle is far from over. Exciting indeed.
 
Again those are only Apple's channels. As soon as it leaves their warehouse they have no way to count them. They could be in inventory at one of the carriers.

Fact that Apple is only telling you those numbers means that they are hiding the real ones. Apple could get a pretty good count on sells by just looking at activation on iTunes. Have the IMEI numbers counted on first activation just like Google does with Android phones and you can get an exact number.
For example Google can release an exact number for Google handsets and I am willing bet they could give an exact break down by model if they wanted to.

Apple could do it as well if they choose. Now yes your numbers can give a rough idea but not exact and have a lot of room to play in them. They only can get what carrier choose to report back to them.

Knight and Kdarling are right.

Either way the numbers are impressive. No one is discounting that. 20 million iPhones is very impressive. It was only a few years ago that 20 mil total number of smart phones sold in a year was though to be insane. now there are 20 mil smart phones phones activated in under a month (android apple, BB, Palm, WP7 ect)




As soon as the disturber pays Apple for the phones they can count it as sold. Apple has their money. Does not matter if it is sitting in disturbers inventory. It been sold as far as Apple is concerned.
Now if it is in Apple warehouse, and said company promised to buy them but has not taken delivory it is still in the channel and can not stuff it.

What I don't understand is how can they use the term sold, and then give the exact number in channel inventory, if they can't keep track of when the end user buys them ? I don't know how it works in other countries, but last time I checked, here in the good ole US of A, sold means sold to end user. Especially when they can give the number that's in inventory.

Maybe they should have just said sales were "smooth."
 
What I don't understand is how can they use the term sold, and then give the exact number in channel inventory, if they can't keep track of when the end user buys them ? I don't know how it works in other countries, but last time I checked, here in the good ole US of A, sold means sold to end user. Especially when they can give the number that's in inventory.

Maybe they should have just said sales were "smooth."

sold means Apple sold them to lets say AT&T, Best buy ect hell even their own Apple stores those to Apple are their end users in this case. We are end users for like Best Buy but not Apple manufacturing division. You are getting confused with what seem logical compared to what it really means. 2 very different things.

Remember Apple does not know the exact inventory of what is in AT&T, Best Buy and so on. And those places are not going to want to hand that exact number back to Apple.
 
I remember steve putting up the stats for the smartphone industry during the launch and said "we want.. 10%" little did he know Nokia were just gonna sit still and watch during the next few years. :cool:
 
theregister.com has some more numbers. Nokia didn't only drop behind Apple, they dropped behind Samsung as well. And according to theregister, they had a profit margin of -4.5%. That's a minus. In other words, every single customer buying a Nokia phone actually cost the company money :eek:

Ever heard of economies of scale?

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.

Apple aimed for 1% of the global market. Not the smart phone market, the overall mobile market. Apple are no where near 20% of the global market. Last i heard (spring 2011) they accounted for 5% of shipped units globally.

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.

Read above. Nokias share of the global market is still 4-5 times as large. As Apple is shooting for a specific segment of the market (one where hugh premiums are possible) i doubt this fact bothers Apple very much though.

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.

Bigger is a two-edged sword in platform environments. As apps become commoditized developers experience margin-pressure, making new developments on said platform less interesting. Conversely, smaller ecosystems have less cut-throat competition allowing for bigger margins making these options more interesting for developers.

Further, large ecosystems suffer from issues related to information overflow etc. But that can at least be addressed, somewhat, through clever design.

As hinted in my post above it is also likely that applications in a near future in most respects will be a de facto industry asset (i.e., accessible to "all" players). In support for the hypothesis we have the growth data from competing ecosystems, the effect highlighted above, and the emergence of HTML5 and dev. tools that allow for (pseudo-) platform independence to name a few.

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.

As already explained in the thread the drop has logical explanations, and before the drop Nokia were doing surprisingly well in the smart phone segment, matching Apples speed of growth in real numbers. Further, theres a key distinction between being able to "capitalize" on a growing market and grabbing a large share of it. A 99% market share does you little good if you dont make any money out of your units.


It's actually been losing traction. That's all it's been doing since intro.

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/12888819/

You, sir, need to learn the difference between MSFT and WP7. It is possible for WP7 to gain traction even if MSFT loses market share, as MSFT has more offerings than WP7 in the market.


Seeing the graph, I don't understand how this statement was made in the original post:

"each company's (samsung and htc) smartphone shipments remains about half that of Apple's."

Seems like samsung smartphone shipment is actually close to 80%-90% of Apple iphone shipment? If the current trajectory is maintained by apple, samsung, and htc, I see apple losing the top spot.

Might be due to the ambiguous nature of "smart phone" concept. Different definitions would lead to difference in numbers for obvious reasons.


I don't think anything has changed. Battle of ecosystems? What kind of metric is that? It is still about profit and Apple clearly leads there.
Otherwise I would agree that there's enough for everyone to profit of.

And Apple is able to profit so well much, if not mainly, due to their strong ecosystem. But no, software based platforms, and platform-based business strategies are hardly new.
 
sold means Apple sold them to lets say AT&T, Best buy ect hell even their own Apple stores those to Apple are their end users in this case. We are end users for like Best Buy but not Apple manufacturing division. You are getting confused with what seem logical compared to what it really means. 2 very different things.

Remember Apple does not know the exact inventory of what is in AT&T, Best Buy and so on. And those places are not going to want to hand that exact number back to Apple.

But what does channel inventory mean then if Apple is reporting units sold AND inventory in the channel (aka currently unsold)?
 
Well, channel-stuffing is illegal. It's perfectly okay to place inventory
in the channel, but it's fraudulent to account for that as a sale if it's not likely to be sold. I'm not exactly sure what is considered "over the line", but it's likely that Apple is erring on the conservative side, because being forced by the SEC to restate earnings due to channel-stuffing would obliterate Apple stock value.

Apple can count it as sold when it's sold, for example to a distributor, and that distributor has to pay. If for example AT&T suddenly ordered 50 million iPhones that they have no chance to sell to end users, then Apple can count this as a sale at the point where AT&T is legally committed to pay Apple. Illegal channel stuffing would be happening if Apple signed a contract with AT&T for delivery of 50 million iPhones, giving AT&T the right to return them if they can't sell them; and if Apple counted those as "sold".

Of course Apple would have to tell stockholders that AT&T still has 48 million iPhones in a warehouse and is very unlikely to order any more for the next ffew years.


But what does channel inventory mean then if Apple is reporting units sold AND inventory in the channel (aka currently unsold)?

Apple can count the channel inventory as sold because it is sold by Apple (I think they can't count phones at Apple stores as sold), but if there is excessive channel inventory, then distributors will not buy any more until the inventory is more normal.
 
Again those are only Apple's channels. As soon as it leaves their warehouse they have no way to count them. They could be in inventory at one of the carriers.

Fact that Apple is only telling you those numbers means that they are hiding the real ones. Apple could get a pretty good count on sells by just looking at activation on iTunes.

How do you know they aren't doing that!? Apple knows how many they shipped and how many they activated... they could then figure out how many are still in the channel and how many were sold.


Have the IMEI numbers counted on first activation just like Google does with Android phones and you can get an exact number. For example Google can release an exact number for Google handsets and I am willing bet they could give an exact break down by model if they wanted to.

So you know without a certainty of doubt that Google is only counting brand new activations and their numbers are accurate? Even though there may still be a lot of Android devices sold that haven't yet been activated.

You're also going to assume that Apple is not looking at activations and just making up numbers to hide something?

That's ridiculous.


I'm pretty sure Apple has a better handle on inventory than you think is possible - they are VERY good at keeping inventory within a certain range. In fact it is possible to gauge sell through rates by how many units are being reordered by a partner. AT&T doesn't have to tell Apple how many they sold, Apple can guesstimate because they know how many they sent the first time and how many more were ordered.

Anyone who knows anything about inventory managment, knows you can derive numbers from it and see what's happening.
 
It's not so much Apple 'topping' Nokia as Nokia committing suicide.

Just look at what happened to Nokia's sales after they announced they were switching to Windows Phone. It's not Apple's efforts that have made them No.1, it's Nokia's stupidity.

Carriers stopped stocking the now obsolete nokia smartphones that had been selling relatively ok the month before.

Consumers stopped buying nokia phones entirely, even the dumb phones because rightly or wrongly, store staff were warning them off of Nokias.

Developers stopped developing for Symbian/MeeGo because they'd be wasting their time.

Q3 and Q4 are going to be another bloodbath for Nokia. They only did relatively ok in Q2 because Apple finally paid them for their IP. Nokia would have lost closer to a billion if not for the payment from Apple.

Such a pity when they've got the Nokia N9 jumping about in the background. Could it have saved them? Probably not but jeez it'd be going down in glory instead of death by Microsoft.
 
They have a come back ready

I know a lot of you cant hear this without dying a little inside, but Nokia WILL be back on top once the Windows Phones are out. There is this place out there called ....the rest of the world.

And they like Nokia, they want these phones and once they see this one in a friends hand . Nokia will be selling like hotcakes !

11x0211nokiaconcept.jpg
 
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