Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPhone Market Share Dips Slightly as Android Increases Lead in Global Smartphone Race
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
No. You're dismissing an entire range of cheap smartphones that probably does not even exist in the US due to the weird carrier contract model. The iPhone 4S is in the range of 350-400 in Europe. There is a huge amount of phones that are <200, and they are selling in huge volumes (mainly in Asia).
iOS and Android were (and are) better operating systems. They lost because the competition made better phones.
Are you from a socialist country, pass on savings to customers? What are you talking about? They are not the electric company. Who passes the savings on to the customer? It is all about supply and demand. Set any price you want and see how many want it for that price. Apple is free to charge ANY price they want.
Or maybe 50%. Or 90%. Or 0.03%. Please tell me why any of them is wrong (or not).
You can't.
Yes, it's important to know how each company derives its figures. Some use parts sources, factory insiders, warehouse counts, and customs declarations. Others monitor their own large constant consumer groups, kind of like Nielsen families.
Kantar is big on using worldwide consumer surveys, I believe.
Tim Cook and his crew often quote Kantar, IDC, etc in Apple's quarterly earnings calls. Apparently the figures are good enough for them.
What part do you not put a lot of stock in?
Do you get off on the prestige of driving an elitist car and owning an elitist phone? Or perhaps you're just speaking as an Apple shareholder. See my comment above about the early Mac team vs John Sculley and the pricing of the original Mac. If you don't understand what drove the original Mac team, then those comments will be lost on you. But you should understand the ones made by other people, explaining how a loss of marketshare will have a flow-on effect—to developers, then consumers, and eventually to the all-blessed P&L statement.
Only its continued existence. You sound like the guy who said 'This job would be great if it wasn't for the **** customers'.
Edit: In retrospect this comment was unfairly derogatory. Apologies to peterdevries.
Last edited:
FIRST and FOREMOST, Blackberry lost because they took their eye off of the ball.
I think Apple is showing some of that behaviour - questionable software releases being a start i.e.. iWork, iOS 7, etc.
Sure. They're also free to continue losing marketshare and all that entails.
If Apple sells more units every quarter in every category they are in wouldn't that be enough growth?
When you say eyes off the ball, you mean not innovating, but relying on the same design for years. Well Apple needs to be vary careful of not resting on their laurels in this very case.
No need for the aggressiveness. I don't remember ridiculing your comment.
If you want me to respond to your posts and have a discussion than please try to stay civilsed. You can see in my comment history that I usually respond in a kind matter and explain my opinions in detail based on fact.
A for-profit company's objective is to make as fat margins as it can. Any profit after expense belongs to shareholders, not customers. I think you are confusing Apple with a co-op.
As the chart at the top of the thread demonstrates, people are not forced to by Apple products. If enough don't buy then the company has to adjust the product line, pricing (lower margins), or both, to draw in customers. On occasion Apple has done that (original iPhone just one example. iPods another.). But it's not a goal of any profitable enterprise to decrease prices just to give customers a breather from high prices. If Apple wasn't selling product it wouldn't be taking in income. If that were the case would you feel as sorry for Apple as you do irritation now?
Apple fans are turning into Gollum.
Marketshare is the false. They stole it from us. Sneaky little Androids. Wicked, tricksy, false!
But but but profits! It's the precious. We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious. Still have the precious!
In the age of the Moto G which is a great phone no matter how you look at it (except from ivory tower of course), unlocked, free of contract and subsidies for $179, things will be even more challenging for Apple. Once the carriers start dropping subsidies (Tmo has already done it and att and vzw are taking about it) cheap but still functionally great stuff like the Moto G will sell a ton and good ole Sammy and Apple will be the ones that'll be hurt. Sammy can crank out a cheap phone with decent hardware for sure but they'll fail at the software and updates part whereas Apple will continue to refuse to play under the Premium Brand nonsense which will continue to be even more meaningless than it already is.
Interesting times.
Marketshare is the false. They stole it from us. Sneaky little Androids. Wicked, tricksy, false!
But but but profits! It's the precious. We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious. Still have the precious!
In the age of the Moto G which is a great phone no matter how you look at it (except from ivory tower of course), unlocked, free of contract and subsidies for $179, things will be even more challenging for Apple. Once the carriers start dropping subsidies (Tmo has already done it and att and vzw are taking about it) cheap but still functionally great stuff like the Moto G will sell a ton and good ole Sammy and Apple will be the ones that'll be hurt. Sammy can crank out a cheap phone with decent hardware for sure but they'll fail at the software and updates part whereas Apple will continue to refuse to play under the Premium Brand nonsense which will continue to be even more meaningless than it already is.
Interesting times.
I recall that when Walmart began to carry the iPhone, there were cries that Apple was selling out and that soon everyone and their brother would have an iPhone. The "exclusivity" of the brand would be diluted.
Well now we're seeing that's not happening. Apple is still a brand for a particular consumer, similar to how people chose Macs over PCs. And Apple doesn't seem to mind. Remember how Jobs stated that Apple would be happy with 1% of the mobile market. Over the past seven years, they've racked up nearly 50% in various markets! That's a phenomenal achievement.
But more important for Apple, they're not hurting financially. Sure, there are always areas where they could grow their market share. But the company is still posting record profits.
I feel like it it doesn't makes sense to compare all iPhones with all Android phones. Maybe one particular iPhone compared with with one particular Android (iPhone 5 vs. Samsung Galaxy 3) but not the entire lineup of androids vs. iPhones. There are just too many Android manufacturers, and when you get down to it, there are so many cheap Android phones that are free these days. They've become the Nokia candy bar style phone of today (remember the free Nokia everyone used to get with a cell phone contract?). It wouldn't make sense to compare the numbers of those cheap free simple Nokia phones with the number of premium phones back then either.
lol majority of people buy iPhones because they are premium/expensive. How many people are going to understand that you going to get the same android experience from a Moto X versus a S-4 or S5
You need to define what the low end market is. What price level does the low end market end at? Does the low-end market include those who purchase subsidized phones on contract?
If anything, Apple is targeting a different customer when they continuing to sell an old device for a lower price than they used to. The iPhone 4 was free on a two year contact IIRC.
As someone else said, that's a very American-based point of view (and likely is one of the reasons why Apple's market share is so big in the USA).
In most of the world, those subsidies for buying a phone don't exist. Which means, in most markets Apple is far from entering the cheap market.