Report: Samsung and Apple dominate Q4 with 51 percent of global smartphone market

Jordan Kahn

IDC-Q4-2012-shipments

Screen Shot 2013-01-25 at 9.01.51 AM

Q4 2012 estimates from Strategy Analytics

While Samsung has conveniently left specific smartphone sales numbers out of its Q4 earnings release yesterday (as usual), today we get a look at the latest estimates for the quarter coming from research firms Strategy Analytics and IDC.

We know that Apple sold 47.8 million iPhones during the quarter, and today both research firms put Samsung just over 63 million units for Q4 2012. That means Samsung was able to capture 29 percent of the market last quarter (up from 36.2 million units and 22.5-percent of the market in the year ago quarter). Apple is of course a close second among the top five smartphone vendors with 21.8-percent—down slightly from the 23 percent it held in the same quarter last year. In Q4 2011, Apple and Samsung were neck and neck at about 23 percent of the market each.

The increasing market share for Apple, and especially Samsung, over the past year comes at the expense of Nokia. It experienced a drop from 16 percent to 5 percent of the market during the past year.  Read more

Gartner: Apple and Samsung capture almost half of smartphone market in Q3, Android passes 70 percent share

Jordan Kahn

Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users by Operating System in 3Q12

Gartner is out with its quarterly report for worldwide mobile device sales by vendor and OS for the third quarter. While reporting an overall 3 percent decline in mobile phone sales, the smartphone category hit 169.2 million units in Q3, a 47 percent increase from the year-ago quarter. While Apple is still third to Samsung and Nokia for total mobile device sales, Samsung and Apple remain the top smartphone vendors collectively, capturing 46.5-percent of the market. Meanwhile, Nokia slipped from No. 3 smartphone vendor in Q2 to No. 7 in Q3. This made room for RIM and HTC behind Apple and Samsung in the third and fourth positions.

With sales of 23.6 million units in the third quarter for Apple (up 36.2-percent year-on-year), Gartner reported Samsung has widened its lead on Apple with almost 55 million smartphones in the quarter and strong demand for its Galaxy line. Samsung once again takes the top vendor position for smartphones with 32.5-percent of the market:

Samsung’s mobile phones sales continued to accelerate, totaling almost 98 million units in the third quarter of 2012 (see Table 1), up 18.6 percent year-on-year. Samsung saw strong demand for Galaxy smartphones across different price points, and it further widened the gap with Apple in the smartphone market, selling 55 million smartphones in the third quarter of 2012. It commanded 32.5 percent of the global smartphone market in the third quarter of 2012.

As for the race between Android and iOS, Gartner’s numbers show Android increased its marketshare nearly 20 percentage points in the quarter to 72.4-percent of the market, up from just 52.5-percent in the year-ago quarter. In comparison, Apple now accounts for 13.9-percent of the market, down from 15 percent last year, but Gartner expects that to change in Q4 thanks to the continuing iPhone 5 roll out: Read more

IDC: Android is now on 3 out of every 4 smartphones sold

Jordan Kahn

IDC is out with its latest report that covers the top six smartphone operating systems by shipments and market share during Q3 2012. In the study, IDC found Android on nearly 75 percent of all smartphones shipped during the quarter, giving Android 136 million units of the 181.1 million total smartphones shipped during Q3 2012. That accounts for 91.5-percent year-over-year growth, beating out 57.3- percent year-over-year growth for Apple, and an average market growth of 46.4-percent. Apple shipped 26.9 million iPhones, in comparison, giving the company 14.9-percent of the market in the third quarter. Samsung is once again the top Android vendor:

Android, having topped the 100 million unit mark last quarter, reached a new record level in a single quarter. By comparison, Android’s total volumes for the quarter were greater than the total number of smartphones shipped in 2007, the year that Android was officially announced. Samsung once again led all vendors in this space, but saw its market share decline as numerous smaller vendors increased their production.

iOS was a distant second place to Android, but was the only other mobile operating system to amass double-digit market share for the quarter. The late quarter launch of the iPhone 5 and lower prices on older models prevented total shipment volumes from slipping to 3Q11 levels. But without a splashy new OS-driven feature like Siri in 2011 and FaceTime in 2010, the iPhone 5 relied on its larger, but not wider, screen and LTE connectivity to drive growth.

Samsung remains top OEM in March, as Android and iOS capture 80 percent of US market

Jordan Kahn

Following IDC’s report this morning that highlighted Apple’s continued growth among mobile phone marketshare worldwide, while coming second to Samsung in global smartphone marketshare, research firm comScore just released its numbers for United States mobile subscribers for the three-month period ending March 2012.

According to comScore, Apple posted impressive growth during the quarter with 30.7-percent marketshare among smartphone platforms in the U.S (up from 29.6-percent). Increasing from 47.3-percent in December 2011 to 51 percent in March 2012, Android was able to grab the top position for platforms during the quarter. Growth for Android and iOS continues to come at the expense of RIM. The company grabbed just 12.3-percent of the platform market in March, which is down from 16 percent in December 2011. Microsoft also lost marketshare with 3.9-percent, which is down from 4.7-percent…
Read more

IDC: Samsung takes top smartphone marketshare position in Q1, overtakes Nokia for mobile phones

Jordan Kahn

Today, research firm IDC published its Q1 2012 report of top mobile phone and smartphone shipments worldwide. While Apple was able to post impressive growth with a high of 8.8-percent of the total mobile phone market (up from 4.6-percent a year ago) and 24.2-percent of the global smartphone market (up from 18.3-percent), Samsung was able overtake Apple for the top spot with a year-over-year change of 267 percent and 29.1-percent of the total smartphone market. Samsung also took the top spot of global mobile phone marketshare from Nokia for the first time since 2004.

Meanwhile, the worldwide smartphone market grew 42.5% year over year in 1Q12, as Samsung overtook Apple for the smartphone leadership position. Vendors shipped 144.9 million smartphones in 1Q12 compared to 101.7 million units in 1Q11. The 42.5% year-over-year growth was 1% higher than IDC’s forecast of 41.5% for the quarter, and lower than the 57.4% growth in the fourth quarter of 2011

In terms of shipments among smartphone vendors, Apple took the second spot behind Samsung up from 18.6 million units in Q1 2011 to 35.1 million in Q1 2012. Apple was only behind Samsung with 42.2 million units shipped, up from just 11.5 million a year ago.

The company does not publicly release shipments from Samsung, and IDC’s number of 42.2 million smartphones shipped during Q1 is significantly more than the 32 million estimated by IHS iSuppli just days ago. If IHS’s estimate were correct, it would put Samsung much closer to the 35.1 million devices Apple confirmed it shipped sold during the quarter.

 
Read more

Kindle Fire pushes Android tablet market share over 40 percent in Q4 2011

Jordan Kahn

IDC just released its Q4 2011 report on tablet shipments and Apple continues to lead the market with 54.7-percent of global market share despite being down from 61.5-percent in the quarter before. Apple did increase shipments to 15.4 million units in Q4 (up from 11.1 million in Q3), but experienced an overall decrease in market share thanks to strong gains from Amazon’s Kindle Fire and other Android devices from competitors such as Samsung.

Kindle Fire is now the iPad’s biggest competitor with 16.8-percent of the tablet market due to 4.7 million units shipped during Q4, which is followed by Samsung with 5.8-percent of the market (up from 5.5-percent in Q3). IDC noted Apple’s results for the quarter represent “an increase of 110.5-percent from 4Q10.” The Nook Tablet from Barnes & Noble came in fourth, but it fell slightly to 3.5-percent of the market (from 4.5-percent the quarter before). Pandigital took the No. 5 spot, but it is down from 2.9-percent to 2.5-percent market share.

As for iOS vs. Android, IDC is expecting Android to overtake iOS for global market share by 2015 and noted that Android now has 44.6-percent of the market as of Q4 2011. That resulted in a decrease for iOS, which fell from 61.6-percent to 54.7-during the quarter. As we noted before, IDC’s report accounts for tablet shipments and not actual sales. We know Apple typically sells as many new devices as it can make, and the same cannot be said for devices shipped by all Android vendors. Research Director at IDC’s Mobile Connected Devices Tom Mainelli talked about the report:

Read more