6 ms·

Apple topped 53% U.S. smartphone market share in Q4 2012

63 points by akos 14y ago

rednukleus 14y ago
It will be very interesting to see how much of this bump they can hold in Q1 2012. Also, the article downplays how much RIM got slaughtered. Not just "down 6%" but from 7.0 to 1.4% marketshare. Ouch.
- vigrant 14y ago
  Q1 2013
  - rednukleus 14y ago
    Yeah, that's the one.
- jlgreco 14y ago
  > Not just "down 6%" but from 7.0 to 1.4% marketshare. Yeah, that drives me nutty. That is not "6%" down, that is "6 percentage points". The pertentage drop is far larger than 6%.
- ajross 14y ago
  It's not so much a "bump" as a cycle. They release a phone every year, this was that quarter. Clearly they won't sell the same number of units next quarter. Their competitors ship far more (and more varied) products and don't really show that kind of behavior. So next quarter we'll be treated to "iOS is shrinking!" posts which are equally silly. And next fall the circle of life will repeat. As you correctly point out, the real news in this data is that Blackberry sales dropped by 80%, which is so shocking that I wonder if a digit got slipped somewhere.
  - Steko 14y ago
    "so shocking that I wonder if a digit got slipped somewhere." Sounds like Verizon flipped a certain digit at RIM. Possibly a good amount of August 2012 iPhone syndrome as well, "don't buy a Blackberry now, the new ones are coming in January"
nirvana 14y ago
There's a tendency in the "tech" press to focus on a very narrow idea of "share". When they say "market share" they are almost always talking about new unit sales. This is because it's a lot cheaper to just take reports from companies that issue them (as press releases) and then write up a story from that... and these companies are analyzing only the most recent sales (for the most party.) Actual market share is something quite different, as it includes all of the previously sold, but still operating devices. The share relevant to developers is still another matter, as it must take into account the operating system the developer is targetting and how many devices still in use are using that operating system. So, if you're a developer for high end mobile games, you might require Android Jelly Bean and iOS 6. Thus the question of where to direct your resources would best be answered by "What is the addressable market size for these two operating systems?" I don't know the answer to that, but too often the torrent of shallow media news talking about "Share" that only talks about the current sales is taken as some sort of relevant long term value. It's like saying Las Vegas is cold because you took the temperature one day in January. Worse you took that temperature in a freezer, rather than out in the open air. (Eg you're not even measuring the same thing the conclusion is about.)
- dudurocha 14y ago
  Exacly. A much better way to collect this kind of data is too see the usage of mobile browsers. If you could get this data from de 100 most visited websites, and make a medium, maybe you could get a better 'market share' number.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    Even more precisely would be to collect IMEI numbers from mobile operators. In the absence of that I've seen some guerilla work where people drive around 'fake' 3G cell sites which slurps IMEI's from phones that ping them. Totally illegal of course but if you read the article on how an RPi was turned into a cell site [1] you can get an idea of how its done. Since you're not actually taking calls you don't raise the suspicions of users. [1] http://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/news/how-pa-shrunk-30-ft-mobile-phone-basestation-into-3in-computer/ http://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/news/how-pa-shrunk-30-ft-m...
jacalata 14y ago
Well, that's...surprisingly different to the ComScore numbers released today(/yesterday). http://mashable.com/2013/01/04/apple-smartphone-market-share-35-percent/ http://mashable.com/2013/01/04/apple-smartphone-market-share... Is Kantar actually tracking sales share, rather than ownership? That seems to be the only way these two sets of numbers reconcile, and is plausible from the wording of the article.
- rednukleus 14y ago
  I love the fact that the article you linked, which is about how Google have gained 1.1% marketshare, and Apple gained 0.7% marketshare, is called "Apple's U.S. Smartphone Market Share Rises" with a massive picture of an iPhone.
  - lostlogin 14y ago
    Of that 1.1% I wounded how much is Samsung? I'm picking they had a bigger growth than android.
    - rednukleus 14y ago
      From the article, Samsung grew 1.2% of all phones (including feature phones). So I'd say they almost certainly did grow faster than Android as a whole. I wouldn't be that surprised if Android minus Samsung contracted slightly in the quarter.
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    The tech news community is chock full of Apple fanbois. Has been for years.
    - guywithabike 14y ago
      It's not about "fanbois" (whatever the hell that means), it's about the fact that articles about Apple attract orders-of-magnitude more clicks, and PR-reposting sites like Mashable worship at the alter of pageviews.
Steko 14y ago
This dance is now familiar. Apple does better than 50% in their release quarter and then slowly sinks to something like 15%-20% in the months prior to the next phone's release. The interesting thing is that this time Apple launched the iPhone 5 to more or less the whole world in the first 3 months and change and so most people think they're moving to a semi-annual release schedule.
calciphus 14y ago
I'm always entertained when these numbers are so drastically different. These guys are getting their numbers from interviews. Think about that. Wikipedia used to keep a meta-table of a bunch of different sources and market share numbers, sadly that's gone.
mrb 14y ago
The 53% number is for a very narrow period of time: the 12 weeks ending on Nov 25, 2012, which just coincides with the release of iPhone 5... IOW: nothing to see here, move along. Like jacalata pointed out, the average market share of iOS, measured on a longer period of time, is closer to 35%: http://mashable.com/2013/01/04/apple-smartphone-market-share-35-percent/ http://mashable.com/2013/01/04/apple-smartphone-market-share...
fulmato 14y ago
this is bs
dannyr 14y ago
I'm getting confused with all these stats but it's just sloppy reporting by the tech press. This writer didn't even mention that this is just new smartphone sales instead of overall shares. I thought VentureBeat is one of the better ones. I guess not.
salem 14y ago
At what point does the DOJ declare that they have a dominant share of the smartphone market, and that there should be increased oversight of anti-competitive behavior?

63 points by akos 14y ago

It will be very interesting to see how much of this bump they can hold in Q1 2012. Also, the article downplays how much RIM got slaughtered. Not just "down 6%" but from 7.0 to 1.4% marketshare. Ouch.

vigrant 14y ago
Q1 2013
- rednukleus 14y ago
  Yeah, that's the one.
jlgreco 14y ago
> Not just "down 6%" but from 7.0 to 1.4% marketshare. Yeah, that drives me nutty. That is not "6%" down, that is "6 percentage points". The pertentage drop is far larger than 6%.
ajross 14y ago
It's not so much a "bump" as a cycle. They release a phone every year, this was that quarter. Clearly they won't sell the same number of units next quarter. Their competitors ship far more (and more varied) products and don't really show that kind of behavior. So next quarter we'll be treated to "iOS is shrinking!" posts which are equally silly. And next fall the circle of life will repeat. As you correctly point out, the real news in this data is that Blackberry sales dropped by 80%, which is so shocking that I wonder if a digit got slipped somewhere.
- Steko 14y ago
  "so shocking that I wonder if a digit got slipped somewhere." Sounds like Verizon flipped a certain digit at RIM. Possibly a good amount of August 2012 iPhone syndrome as well, "don't buy a Blackberry now, the new ones are coming in January"

nirvana 14y ago

There's a tendency in the "tech" press to focus on a very narrow idea of "share". When they say "market share" they are almost always talking about new unit sales. This is because it's a lot cheaper to just take reports from companies that issue them (as press releases) and then write up a story from that... and these companies are analyzing only the most recent sales (for the most party.) Actual market share is something quite different, as it includes all of the previously sold, but still operating devices. The share relevant to developers is still another matter, as it must take into account the operating system the developer is targetting and how many devices still in use are using that operating system. So, if you're a developer for high end mobile games, you might require Android Jelly Bean and iOS 6. Thus the question of where to direct your resources would best be answered by "What is the addressable market size for these two operating systems?" I don't know the answer to that, but too often the torrent of shallow media news talking about "Share" that only talks about the current sales is taken as some sort of relevant long term value. It's like saying Las Vegas is cold because you took the temperature one day in January. Worse you took that temperature in a freezer, rather than out in the open air. (Eg you're not even measuring the same thing the conclusion is about.)

dudurocha 14y ago
Exacly. A much better way to collect this kind of data is too see the usage of mobile browsers. If you could get this data from de 100 most visited websites, and make a medium, maybe you could get a better 'market share' number.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  Even more precisely would be to collect IMEI numbers from mobile operators. In the absence of that I've seen some guerilla work where people drive around 'fake' 3G cell sites which slurps IMEI's from phones that ping them. Totally illegal of course but if you read the article on how an RPi was turned into a cell site [1] you can get an idea of how its done. Since you're not actually taking calls you don't raise the suspicions of users. [1] http://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/news/how-pa-shrunk-30-ft-mobile-phone-basestation-into-3in-computer/ http://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/news/how-pa-shrunk-30-ft-m...

jacalata 14y ago

Well, that's...surprisingly different to the ComScore numbers released today(/yesterday). http://mashable.com/2013/01/04/apple-smartphone-market-share-35-percent/ http://mashable.com/2013/01/04/apple-smartphone-market-share... Is Kantar actually tracking sales share, rather than ownership? That seems to be the only way these two sets of numbers reconcile, and is plausible from the wording of the article.

rednukleus 14y ago
I love the fact that the article you linked, which is about how Google have gained 1.1% marketshare, and Apple gained 0.7% marketshare, is called "Apple's U.S. Smartphone Market Share Rises" with a massive picture of an iPhone.
- lostlogin 14y ago
  Of that 1.1% I wounded how much is Samsung? I'm picking they had a bigger growth than android.
  - rednukleus 14y ago
    From the article, Samsung grew 1.2% of all phones (including feature phones). So I'd say they almost certainly did grow faster than Android as a whole. I wouldn't be that surprised if Android minus Samsung contracted slightly in the quarter.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  The tech news community is chock full of Apple fanbois. Has been for years.
  - guywithabike 14y ago
    It's not about "fanbois" (whatever the hell that means), it's about the fact that articles about Apple attract orders-of-magnitude more clicks, and PR-reposting sites like Mashable worship at the alter of pageviews.

Steko 14y ago

This dance is now familiar. Apple does better than 50% in their release quarter and then slowly sinks to something like 15%-20% in the months prior to the next phone's release. The interesting thing is that this time Apple launched the iPhone 5 to more or less the whole world in the first 3 months and change and so most people think they're moving to a semi-annual release schedule.

calciphus 14y ago

I'm always entertained when these numbers are so drastically different. These guys are getting their numbers from interviews. Think about that. Wikipedia used to keep a meta-table of a bunch of different sources and market share numbers, sadly that's gone.

mrb 14y ago

The 53% number is for a very narrow period of time: the 12 weeks ending on Nov 25, 2012, which just coincides with the release of iPhone 5... IOW: nothing to see here, move along. Like jacalata pointed out, the average market share of iOS, measured on a longer period of time, is closer to 35%: http://mashable.com/2013/01/04/apple-smartphone-market-share-35-percent/ http://mashable.com/2013/01/04/apple-smartphone-market-share...

fulmato 14y ago

this is bs

dannyr 14y ago

I'm getting confused with all these stats but it's just sloppy reporting by the tech press. This writer didn't even mention that this is just new smartphone sales instead of overall shares. I thought VentureBeat is one of the better ones. I guess not.

salem 14y ago

At what point does the DOJ declare that they have a dominant share of the smartphone market, and that there should be increased oversight of anti-competitive behavior?