Apple's Smartphone Market Share Slips as Huawei, Lenovo Make Gains

[TWSS37]

You don't know if Apple will make the most profit. Market share isn't the only factor for profit but is one of them. What if Apple loses sales due to low market share? That's what happened with the Mac back when there was so little software for it.

----------



No, I'd still rather use the iPhone 3GS for the OS. Whatever Android OS you can choose can't even sync with my PC (plus it's a total mess in other ways) until they clean up their act, so it's not an option.

That isn't really Google's niche though as they want you to syncing with their cloud services, an area which Apple historically hasn't fared well in. That being said, hooking up an Android device to a PC requires nothing more than a cable; no proprietary software or anything else. So to each their own, I just feel that's not a logical example of inoperability.

 

[BaldiMac]

I said this on the iPhone forum a while ago.

History tells us that technologies climb fast as the electronics develop, the great brands are then miles in front of the cheaper ones.

There is a MASSIVE gulf between a cheap item and an expensive item.
As the market and electronics matures, it becomes harder as time goes on to maintain the gap.

Apple, and others, every single year are going to have a harder and harder task to persuade the general public that a 600, 700, 800 900 dollar phone is needed, when the 100 or 200 dollar ones are getting better year upon year and closing the gap.

Screens will get as good as they need to be. People won't need more memory, CPU's and GPU's will hit the same limits as desktop machines have now.

And every year the cheap phones will be getting better and better.

Put say a Motorolla Android against an iPhone 3 and it will totally destroy it, in probably every single detail. and an iPhone 3 was THE best, and it's not that long ago.

It's a nice theory to repeat, but it's not supported by history as you claim. Do you see evidence of the high end of the smartphone market disappearing? Any other major tech market?

Seems to me that the high end continues to be redefined as commodity tech catches up to the high end.

CDs, tapes, CDs, Digital.
B&W, Color, Size, Quality, high def, 3D, smart, 4K.
VCR, DVD, Blu Ray.

Growth of the low end of the market does not necessarily come at the expense of the high end. There is certainly no evidence that it does in the smartphone market.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Cheap garbage sells well, so no wonder.
The increasing number of Dollar Stores all over the country are prove of that.

 

[darkslide29]

So obviously all companies kind of lost for this Q2, the only winner is Google.

When there are no more big Android players, but hundreds of small & tiny ones, vanilla Android will command. By that time almost no customers will pay attention to which brand of smartphone they get, they will only know whether they got an Android phone (which means mainstream) or a non-Android phone. From that time, the game will become harder and harder for Apple to play.

One thing I did enjoy about Samsung's success is their insistance of TouchWiz which many times overlapped android, sometimes making standard android features redundant or confusing. And Samsung didn't seem to want to back down. Samsung wants people to say they have a Samsung, not an android.

Who can blame them? But it makes for an interesting story down the line. Will they eventually drop Google and go on their own? (not in the forseeable future, but eventually even iOS will be something else entirely). Or would they continue to skin their phone, to the point where it's barely an android, a la Amazon Fire tablets?

Anyway, point was just that you're probably right about the market when there isn't one dominant android player. But when there is, the power struggle can be fun to watch.

 

[PocketSand11]

That isn't really Google's niche though as they want you to syncing with their cloud services, an area which Apple historically hasn't fared well in. That being said, hooking up an Android device to a PC requires nothing more than a cable; no proprietary software or anything else. So to each their own, I just feel that's not a logical example of inoperability.

Apple's got iCloud and local sync, and they work well together. I really only want local sync. Google on purposely only has cloud sync so I have to go to google.com/something to use any of my data on my PC. I don't want to have to leave browser windows open all over the place. I've got iTunes, Mail, Safari, and Messages all working perfectly and automatically.

 

[groovyd]

Around 1984, if you'll count it, they had the most popular PC with a GUI.

iPods / mp3 players ? smartphones for the first couple years following the iPhone launch ? tablets ?

 

[KazKam]

...meeting consumer demand for a larger-screened device for the first time.

You must mean unlike the last time they met consumer demand for a larger-screened device... https://www.macrumors.com/2012/08/18/complete-iphone-5-front-panel-and-4-screen-photos/

 

[BaldiMac]

iPods / mp3 players ? smartphones for the first couple years following the iPhone launch ? tablets ?

Apple never led in smartphone market share. The lead went from Nokia to Samsung if I remember correctly.

 

[ssspinball]

So obviously all companies kind of lost for this Q2, the only winner is Google.

When there are no more big Android players, but hundreds of small & tiny ones, vanilla Android will command. By that time almost no customers will pay attention to which brand of smartphone they get, they will only know whether they got an Android phone (which means mainstream) or a non-Android phone. From that time, the game will become harder and harder for Apple to play.

So it will devolve into the PC situation where Mac makes all the money and everyone else fights for the scraps on teeny tiny margins and poor quality devices? Yeah that sounds pretty terrible for Apple!

 

[Rootus]

Will they eventually drop Google and go on their own? (not in the forseeable future, but eventually even iOS will be something else entirely). Or would they continue to skin their phone, to the point where it's barely an android, a la Amazon Fire tablets?

That requires having your own successful app store. Google has enormous leverage against the likes of Samsung by making Play Store availability contingent on playing by Google's rules. That leverage only increases over time, as more and more core Android functionality becomes part of the Play Store ecosystem. Android is quickly becoming a walled garden every bit as impenetrable as Apple's.

Put say a Motorolla Android against an iPhone 3 and it will totally destroy it, in probably every single detail. and an iPhone 3 was THE best, and it's not that long ago.

Depending on your perspective, a Moto X already destroys any iPhone produced so far. The iPhone 6 is long overdue. The hardware improvement and additional features in iOS will really help close the gap with Android. I hope they focus on stability, though -- that used to be where Apple shines, but iOS7 has been such a disappointment. My Moto X is a *lot* more stable . iOS8 does look promising, but we won't know anything about stability until it's been in the wild for a while.

 

[TWSS37]

Apple's got iCloud and local sync, and they work well together. I really only want local sync. Google on purposely only has cloud sync so I have to go to google.com/something to use any of my data on my PC. I don't want to have to leave browser windows open all over the place. I've got iTunes, Mail, Safari, and Messages all working perfectly and automatically.

That's fine - I am just saying that Android phones were designed to be more reliant on cloud services on purpose.

Given the fact that I can just as easily plug an Android phone into my Windows PC and back up and files as needed or boot into recovery to create an image of my device at any time, I would find the "ease" of syncing to a PC (especially having to use iTunes for iPhones) to be marginal, if not negligible.

 

[Rogifan]

I guess because IDC was so accurate about Mac scales MR decides their forecasts in smartphones sales are newsworthy?

 

[groovyd]

Apple never led in smartphone market share. The lead went from Nokia to Samsung if I remember correctly.

huh?! are you kidding me? remind me of samsung's first 'smartphone' that was at all even in the same category as apple's first iPhone? i'm not talking feature phones or 'smartphones' that were really just feature phones. iPad took tablet market by storm. iPod took the mp3 market by storm and held the top marketshare for about as long as it ever existed and still does.

 

[Rogifan]

How IDC comes up with its numbers. Basically it's BS. Tim Cook should stop giving them legitimacy by quoting them in earnings calls.

http://fortune.com/2014/07/28/pc-sales-estimates-how-the-sausage-gets-made/

“So, the mantra became, preserve the growth rates; to hell with the actual numbers. Even the growth rates are fiction. The fudge is in the “others” category, which is used as a plug to make the numbers work out. In fairness, we did do survey work, calling around, and attending white box conferences and venues to try to get a feel for that market, but in the end, the process was political. I used to tell customers which parts of the data they could trust, essentially the major vendors by form factor and region. The rest was garbage.”

 

[jovada]

My One Plus One is on its way. Who needs an iPhone anymore?!

 

[Yojimbo007]

1- idc= bogus.... Been pro en already with facts!
2- lets revisit the stats when the iphone 6 comes out!

 

[Piggie]

It's a nice theory to repeat, but it's not supported by history as you claim. Do you see evidence of the high end of the smartphone market disappearing? Any other major tech market?

Seems to me that the high end continues to be redefined as commodity tech catches up to the high end.

CDs, tapes, CDs, Digital.
B&W, Color, Size, Quality, high def, 3D, smart, 4K.
VCR, DVD, Blu Ray.

Growth of the low end of the market does not necessarily come at the expense of the high end. There is certainly no evidence that it does in the smartphone market.

How much do most people pay for Laser printers?
DVD players are nothing now. I remember when the cheapest rotten one was £300 then the cheap ones broke the £99 barrier, shortly afterwards, we had nice Sony and JVC models for only £99.

My point still stands, as Smartphones are still a new market and we are still on the up, though we may well hit the realistic ceilings before long.

I'm not expecting Core i7 5Ghz and NvideaTitan black chips in smartphones any time soon, as they are struggling and hitting thermal and other limits in full size PC's

Phones will hit limits, and annual speed gains will slow, they have to.
Screens will top out, they pretty much are topping out now, and once all the fabs can make them they will come down in price.

We probably have quite a few years left yet.

And don't forget, you still have to sell this.
Myself I love new tech, for new tec's sake, but I'm not Joe Average.

As phones and tablets get better and better with each generation the need to update so fast will also slow as the next model won't be so far ahead as the jump was last year or the year before that.

iPad1 to iPad2 big change.

iPad Air to iPad Air2..... ?

iPad Air5 to iPad Air6 ?

it's always happening, you run out of both things to do/add and tech hits limits. Plus customers before more satisfied without the need to get the new one, as the difference, as I say gets less.

 

[from the ashes]

So maybe when the market grows and all the sales go to cheaper models, Samsung isn't "better", just cheaper.

So Apple remains, still sweeping up most of the profits.

mwop mwop mwa

You do realise that the second folk talk.about profits rather than quality of product it tells a tale all if it's own.

----------

In before someone says, but at least Apple makes the most profits.

See my.post.. The sentiment remains the same..

 

[Rogifan]

And here's how Gartner describes their process (note the bolder part).

“Once an objective is set, analysts gather information through formal and informal surveys of IT users, technology providers and investors, business professionals, academicians and other researchers.” [From Inside Gartner Research]

These surveys and research notes are BS. Especially considering they often go back and restate prior quarters and this "other" bucket gets a lot larger.

Apple confirmed to Philip Elmer Dewitt that Mac sales saw double digit growth in the US. Not one of these firms showed that. Every one of them had declining Mac sales.

 

[DJEmergency]

This is normal. It happens every year right before the next iPhone is announced.

 

[from the ashes]

I said this on the iPhone forum a while ago.

History tells us that technologies climb fast as the electronics develop, the great brands are then miles in front of the cheaper ones.

There is a MASSIVE gulf between a cheap item and an expensive item.
As the market and electronics matures, it becomes harder as time goes on to maintain the gap.

Apple, and others, every single year are going to have a harder and harder task to persuade the general public that a 600, 700, 800 900 dollar phone is needed, when the 100 or 200 dollar ones are getting better year upon year and closing the gap.

Screens will get as good as they need to be. People won't need more memory, CPU's and GPU's will hit the same limits as desktop machines have now.

And every year the cheap phones will be getting better and better.

Put say a Motorolla Android against an iPhone 3 and it will totally destroy it, in probably every single detail. and an iPhone 3 was THE best, and it's not that long ago.

Lol, put the moto. G (budget phone), against the 5s (current flagship), and bar camera stacks up very Well indeed.. Your knowledge.of the smartphone market is so poor it's laughable..

 

[kerrikins]

In before someone says, but at least Apple makes the most profits.

In theory that's all that really matters. They can have a small marketshare to a certain extent, as long as they keep raking in the cash that matters far more than selling tons.

 

[PocketSand11]

That's fine - I am just saying that Android phones were designed to be more reliant on cloud services on purpose.

Given the fact that I can just as easily plug an Android phone into my Windows PC and back up and files as needed or boot into recovery to create an image of my device at any time, I would find the "ease" of syncing to a PC (especially having to use iTunes for iPhones) to be marginal, if not negligible.

It's about syncing, not backup. If you add a song to your Windows PC, it won't show up on an Android phone. If you add a song to your Android phone, it will exist on your Windows PC, but only as part of a disk image that nothing will access.

----------

iPods / mp3 players ? smartphones for the first couple years following the iPhone launch ? tablets ?

Yeah, you might be right about the music players and tablets (if you exclude "tablet PCs"), but I doubt Apple ever led in smartphone market share. Those existed and were actually widely used before Apple made them.

 

[BaldiMac]

huh?! are you kidding me? remind me of samsung's first 'smartphone' that was at all even in the same category as apple's first iPhone? i'm not talking feature phones or 'smartphones' that were really just feature phones.

I'm not kidding you. I have no idea what Samsung's first "smartphone" was. And I definitely have no idea what it has to do with my point.

My memory was off a bit though. Apple led in global smartphone market share for one quarter.
http://www.techhive.com/article/242795/samsung_passes_apple_in_smartphone_shipments.html

iPad took tablet market by storm. iPod took the mp3 market by storm and held the top marketshare for about as long as it ever existed and still does.

Yep. No disagreements there.

How much do most people pay for Laser printers?
DVD players are nothing now. I remember when the cheapest rotten one was £300 then the cheap ones broke the £99 barrier, shortly afterwards, we had nice Sony and JVC models for only £99.

My point still stands, as Smartphones are still a new market and we are still on the up, though we may well hit the realistic ceilings before long.

I'm not expecting Core i7 5Ghz and NvideaTitan black chips in smartphones any time soon, as they are struggling and hitting thermal and other limits in full size PC's

Phones will hit limits, and annual speed gains will slow, they have to.
Screens will top out, they pretty much are topping out now, and once all the fabs can make them they will come down in price.

We probably have quite a few years left yet.

And don't forget, you still have to sell this.
Myself I love new tech, for new tec's sake, but I'm not Joe Average.

As phones and tablets get better and better with each generation the need to update so fast will also slow as the next model won't be so far ahead as the jump was last year or the year before that.

iPad1 to iPad2 big change.

iPad Air to iPad Air2..... ?

iPad Air5 to iPad Air6 ?

it's always happening, you run out of both things to do/add and tech hits limits. Plus customers before more satisfied without the need to get the new one, as the difference, as I say gets less.

Hmmm. You managed to repeat everything again without addressing the points I made. And then went off on a tangent.

 

[Drew Bear]

There is a MASSIVE gulf between a cheap item and an expensive item. As the market and electronics matures, it becomes harder as time goes on to maintain the gap.

Apple, and others, every single year are going to have a harder and harder task to persuade the general public that a 600, 700, 800 900 dollar phone is needed, when the 100 or 200 dollar ones are getting better year upon year and closing the gap.

This has been true with traditional personal computers for decades. Yet Apple continues to do very well selling Macs (average price ~$1200), while HP, Dell et al struggle while selling cheap PCs.

Although it's true that the performance gap between high-end and low-end decreases as a product matures, it never reaches true parity. This is especially true when software plays such a significant part in the quality of user experience. "Good enough" isn't really good enough for many people.

10 years from now $100 smartphones might (no guarantee since new technologies come up that will only be available for high-end gear) be qualitatively closer to $600 smartphones. But there will still be hundreds of millions of customers willing to pay the higher price for what they consider "the best"; more than enough for Apple to make their $billions of profit each month.