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Tag: market-share

  • Nielsen: Android Leads the Market Share in USA

    Android operating system seems to win the battle over iOS, at least in the American market share. At least, that's what a latest research says.

    According to Nielsen's research, 51.8 % of US users that own a smartphone are choosing Android as their operating system. Apple comes second with the 34.3% of the market share, while RIM by Blackberry is third with 8.1% of the market share. Although the figures might be surprising for some of you, in fact they shouldn't be.

    We all know that iPhones dominate in the industry, but we also know that Android is a big competitor. Although their constant battle does not always have a clear winner, in this case the numbers can be justified by the fact that Android is used by many smartphone brands. Also, the fact that Android smartphones are cheaper, at least statistically, than the iPhones, makes users prefer the cost-effective choice. Android's percentage of market share consists of Samsung, HTC, Motorola and other smartphones.

    On the contrary, when we are referring to iOS, we know that it's only iPhone that includes the specific operating system. Despite its higher price, iPhone is still in high esteem and that's why the stand-alone percentage of 34% should not be underestimated.

    After all, times are changing and we are not sure whether the numbers will be the same by the end of the year. We might not be able to predict the winner, and whether it will be a clear victory, but we can tell that the release of Apple's new iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy S III will affect the current graph.

  • iPhone Is Shattered In China: Apple Fails To Win The Chinese Market

    Apple’s strategy of aligning the iPhone to a single mobile operator seems to have failed in China, where Samsung has achieved impressive market share. According to Bloomberg, iPhone has a 7.5% share of smartphones sales in China, while Samsung has 24.3% market share.

    This percentage makes Apple the fifth smartphone seller in the country, while Samsung ranks first. Samsung has sold phones through the three largest mobile operators even since 2009: China Unicom (about 200 million subscribers), China Telecom (129 million subscribers) and China Mobile (655 million subscribers).

    Apple, on the other hand, has sold exclusively through China Unicom, but two weeks ago began to sell its iPhone through China Telecom as well, which should increase the company’s market share. But China Telecom, although huge considering the Western standards, is the smallest of the three Chinese mobile operators.

    The “Father” of mobile communications in China, China Mobile, expects to start selling Apple’s iPhone only after the Cupertino company will release the LTE version, expected by the Chinese company later this year. About 15 million “decoded” iPhones are already in use in China Mobile’s network, without the operator to sell one.

    The reason why the market share is so important is that the smartphones have become a marketing platform, on which developers are building applications running on different operating systems. As for Windows, if a platform reaches a dominant market share, developers tend to “gravitate” around it. Thus, a risk for Apple in China (and worldwide as well) is that Android could become the dominant platform for application development.

    The operating system developed by Google, which supports the smartphones produced by Samsung, is the market leader in China with a share of almost 50%, even though Apple has regained an important part in the previous quarter thanks to the sales of iPhone 4S.

    It is likely that Apple’s sales through China Telecom to help reduce the difference between the Cupertino company and Samsung in China, but until will sell the smartphone through China Mobile, Samsung will remain the leading smartphone manufacturer in China.

  • Alcatel-Lucent Takes Over Number Two Spot From Juniper

    Synergy Research Group announced the publication of the 4Q11 Carrier Infrastructure Market Share report that  provides quarterly market shares for Service Provider Core Routers, Edge Routers, and Carrier Ethernet Switches.

    According the the report, the fourth quarter of 2011 saw carrier infrastructure revenues hovering around the $3 billion mark for the third successive quarter. Full-year 2011 revenues showed a 3.5% uptick from 2010, although 4Q11 revenues were actually down almost 10% against 4Q10, when the market spiked upwards.

    Cisco finished 2011 with a 51% market share in the final quarter and a 50% share of full-year revenues.

    One of the big stories in the quarter was Alcatel-Lucent zipping past Juniper to take over the number two spot in the market share ranking — a feat it has managed in only twice in the last four years. While Alcatel-Lucent grew its revenues strongly from the previous quarter, Juniper's revenues declined substantially, giving Alcatel-Lucent a clear market share lead of 2.7 percentage points in the quarter. For the full year Juniper did maintain its number two ranking, with a market share of 18.2% versus 16.8% for Alcatel-Lucent.

    "Digging into the details, Alcatel-Lucent can thank much of its quarterly revenue growth to a strong performance in the EMEA region, where it increased its market share to over 25%. Juniper can also thank the EMEA region for providing it some bright sparks in a tough quarter — it saw both sequential and year-on-year revenue gains to achieve a 22% regional market share in the final quarter," said Jeremy Duke, Founder & Chief Analyst, Synergy Research Group.

    "Conversely Cisco saw its EMEA market share drop to an all-time low of just 43%. However, there was plenty of good news for Cisco in the quarter, including a market share gain in the high-growth APAC region, increasing its share of the worldwide service provider core router market to almost 65%, and increasing its share of a declining North American edge router and switch market — to levels it hasn't achieved in over three years," he said.

  • Apple Took Two Thirds of Available Mobile Phone Profits in Q2

    iPhone is a huge success for Apple. Besides the fact that is making almost half of the company’s revenues, iPhone collects two-thirds of total profits of the smartphone manufacturers.

    This figure was provided by the consulting company Asymco, founded and led by Horace Dediu. He gathered data from financial statements of the main protagonists that are competing on market for our money for phones.

    Asymco says that Apple has 66.3% of the pie, followed by Samsung with 15%, Research in Motion (RIM) is gathering with its BlackBerrys 11% and HTC has other 7.4%. Moreover, four major global manufacturers – Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and LG – have losses in the last quarter.

    According to Strategy Analytics, Apple now holds the crown of smartphone shipments, with 18.5% of market, followed by Samsung with 17.5% and Nokia with 15.2%.

    Samsung, the main threat, is using three platforms

    Unlike its analysts, who give Samsung with 19.2 million smartphones sold, Dediu estimates the giant at 19.9 million units shipped. Apple has already announced officially that they have 20.3 million terminals. The problem is that Samsung is producing phones that are running on three platforms, Android, Windows Phone 7 and its Bada OS. Rumors say the company refrain from publishing the breakdown and the number of phones, not only because of patent problems they had with Apple and Microsoft, but just because Android deliveries were under Nokia sales, 16.7 million Symbian phones.

    HTC will surpass Blackberry and Nokia

    Asymco analysts also write that the era of slightly increase of the smartphone producers already ended and that is very clear that Symbian and BlackBerry OS have become a burden to their developers and users are not buying any, since the decreases are not cyclic. Nokia already jumped in the Microsoft boat, but RIM is trying a transition to QNX, the operating system on the PlayBook tablet. Also, the hot competition could strongly hit smaller companies such as Motorola and Sony Ericsson. In addition, with iPhone nano entering the fight for the low-cost and medium segment of smartphones would be almost equivalent to a disaster for the small producers of Android or LG, who cannot make profit even so. And that's exactly what Apple is going to do.

    Also, at this rate, HTC will surpass RIM over the next three months in terms of units sold, after giving 12.1 million units in the last quarter (+142%), while RIM has sold 13,2 million BlackBerry phones (+18%).

    You may also want to read:
    Samsung Galaxy R Revealed
    RIM Fires 2000 Employees and Announces Two New Smartphones
    HTC Sensation vs. Samsung Galaxy S 2

  • Nokia, At the Lowest Rate in 14 Years, on a Growing Market

    Nokia mobile phone market share dropped from 30.6% to 25.1%, reaching its lowest level since 1997, selling in the first quarter of 2011 107.6 million units, according to a study made by the research firm Gartner.

    At the same time, Samsung’s sales increased from 64.9 to 68.8 million units, and the producer has a market share of 16.1%.

    The list is completed by LG, which has sold in the first quarter of 2011 27.2 million mobile phones, representing 7.6% of market.

    Apple is ranked four in the mobile phones top, but also in the operating system top, with 16.9 million iPhones sold worldwide, double value than in the first quarter of last year. The company’s market share, both in smartphones and operating systems, increased from 2.3% to 3.9%.

    The sales of the Canadians from Research In Motion, the Blackberry manufacturer, have increased in the same period from 10.8 to 13 million units, the company having a market share of 3%.

    In the operating systems, Android has become the most popular platform in the world, increasing its last year market share from 9.6% to 36%.

    The market share of Symbian, at which Nokia will renounce in favor of Windows Mobile, has decreased in the last year from 44.2% to 27.4%.

    In total, in the first quarter of 2011 were sold 427.9 million mobile phones, an increase with 19% over the number recorded in the first three months of 2010. Gartner says that, despite this 19-percent increase in sales, would have been sold even more smartphones, but several companies have announced the launch of new terminals for the current quarter, and many customers have waited them and haven’t bought any phone in the first three months of the year.

    Smartphone sales have doubled up in the period mentioned, to 100.8 million units, according to the source.

  • West & Central African Com: MTN Nigeria Targets Customer Satisfaction to Expand Market Reach


    VIDEO INTERVIEW: Ahmad Farroukh, CEO of MTN Nigeria, was interviewed at the recent West & Central African Com conference held in Abuja, Nigeria.
    He talks about plans for increasing market share by targeting customer satisfaction. Farroukh also discusses infrastructure sharing and MTN’s Community Phone Service.

  • VIZIO HDTV Sales Boosted By Economic Downturn


    US TV-maker VIZIO remains the largest shipper of LCD HDTVs in North America – with an increased market share as consumers turn to value products.

    Shipments have increased 21.6 per cent in the first quarter of 2009, which is a 69 per cent increase year over year (YOY), according to iSuppli.

    VIZIO HDTVs are primarily merchandised through retail partners, such as Costco Wholesale, WalMart, Sam’s Club and Target stores.

    VIZIO also experienced quarter over quarter growth with a 46 per cent increase in Full HD 120Hz sets and 19 percent increase in 42" and above size TVs.

    LCD TV unit shipments grew 21 per cent from 1,116,428 in the final quarter of 2008 to 1,351,860 in first quarter 2009.

    When plasma HDTVs were added to the results, VIZIO’s shipping totals came to 1,400,207 TVs for the quarter and will also rank No.1 in US sales of total flat panel HDTVs.

    Riddhi Patel, principal analyst, television systems, for iSuppli, said that due to its aggressive pricing, VIZIO for some time has maintained its position as North America’s top-selling LCD TV value brand.

    "However, since the onset of the economic downturn, VIZIO’s share has risen dramatically," he said.

  • Blackberry Curve Overtakes iPhone To Be Q1 Best-Seller


    Helped in no small part by aggressive promotions, RIM’s Blackberry Curve became the best-selling US smartphone in the first quarter of 2009 – overtaking Apple’s iPhone.

    The Curve’s popularity helped increase RIM’s consumer smartphone market share by 15 per cent over the previous quarter to almost 50 per cent, according to market research firm NPD.

    Apple’s iPhone – the previous top-seller – and Palm each saw their market share slip by 10 per cent during the three-month period ended March.

    NPD’s director of industry analysis, Ross Rubin, attributed the changes to an aggressive "buy-one-get-one" promotion by Verizon Wireless.

    "The more familiar, and less expensive, Curve benefited from these giveaways and was able to leapfrog the iPhone, due to its broader availability on the four major US national carriers," he said.

    The promotion also helped RIM secure two additional top five positions.

    In the third slot was the BlackBerry Storm, and the fourth was made up of all BlackBerry Pearl handsets with the exception of flip models.

    T-Mobile’s G1 handset running Google’s open Android software was the fifth most popular smartphone during the quarter.

    Based on US consumer sales of smartphone handsets in NPD’s Smartphone Market Update report, the first-quarter 2009 ranking of the top-five best-selling smartphones is as follows:

    1. RIM BlackBerry Curve (all 83XX models)
    2. Apple iPhone 3G (all models)
    3. RIM BlackBerry Storm
    4. RIM BlackBerry Pearl (all models, except flip)
    5. T-Mobile G1

    Smartphones, which represented just 17 per cent of handset sales volume in Q1 2008, now make up 23 per cent of sales.

    Rubin said this showed that even in a challenging economy, consumers are migrating toward Web-capable handsets and their supporting data plans to access more information and entertainment on the go.

  • Can Nokia Rise To Apple's challenge?


    Nokia will see its share of the global smartphone market halved from 40 to 20 per cent by 2013, according to Generator Research.

    And who is going to be gobbling up Nokia’s lost business? Why Apple, of course.

    Generator believes Apple’s embryonic mobile business could knock Nokia from the top spot in the smartphone market and transform the mobile services market in the process.

    It predicts Apple could ship as many as 77 million iPhones in 2013 – while Nokia’s share would sit at just 38.5 million based on the analysts’ calculations.

    But is it likely the Finnish company will allow itself to be toppled so dramatically – even given the iPhone’s phenomenal success and Nokia’s continued under-performance in the US?

    Based on Generator’s analysis, the matter may be out of Nokia’s hands.

    Its report suggests that with cash reserves exceeding USD $25 billion, 33 per cent gross margins and the iPhone just about to enter its fastest-growth phase, Apple is extremely well placed.

    The iPhone-maker has the "resources, competencies and motivation" to invest in the mobile sector just at the time when the economic climate is forcing
    many established players in the mobile industry to cut back on product development.

    Generator adds that the impact on some incumbent players is likely to be substantial – not least Nokia’s.

    Andrew Sheehy, head of research at Generator, said the iPhone and App Store constitute a vertical platform for the delivery of advanced mobile services that will be developed in a similar manner to how Apple developed its digital music platform – including the iPod and the iTunes Music Store.

    "Outsiders are rewriting the mobile industry’s rulebook for how to deliver mobile services and the new rule number one is that you need a fully-integrated service development platform that has a rich API which is open to third party developers on favourable commercial terms," he said.

    "Right now, Apple has the best platform and the best-looking forward roadmap."

    Sheehy adds that Apple will use its financial strength and revenue velocity to try to get one or more design cycles ahead of the competition.

    "By that time the iPhone will include a range of different models, each addressing different market segments and the App Store will have developed to
    the point where third party developers have access to network assets that will allow them to write programs that can send messages and establish voice
    calls between different iPhones," he said.

    Fanciful ruminations or worryingly accurate (if you’re Nokia)? We would like to hear your comments.