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« Gartner measures all apps of apps stores worth 4.2B dollars in 2009 | Main | Do yourself a favor, watch this slideset: Mobile Trends 2020 (or watch it again) »

February 01, 2010

Comments

Romain Criton

Hi Tomi,
Thanks for sharing those data, I can't wait for the full Almanac.
I'm surprised that you say Motorola did so bad for the 4th quarter, given the relative success of the Droid in the US (I'm not sure the Milestone, GSM version of the Droid, did so well abroad). The general consensus among the tech press was that the Droid marked the starting point of the recovery of Motorola handset division...
But, hey, numbers don't lie !

Tomi Ahonen

Hi Romain

Haha, good comment. And the 'general consensus' view? Well, you probably know my open letter to Motorola on this blog, what is the 'only' way to get that sick company back to profits and market share growth. They did lose half their customers in 2009 (second year in a row they managed that 'feat') and they did sell smartphones before the Droid. Their TOTAL smartphone sales is far less than HTC's or Fujitsu's and 2 million is in the range of SonyEricsson and Samsung. The Android smartphones will come in at the higher end of the price range of smartphones - that is TOTALLY not viable to replace 14 million handsets sold per quarter or 50 million annually, not even if Motorola did the ultimate tech launch of all time - which they did not do.

No, the Droid in America did achive some modest success but 2 million total smartphones sold out of 12 million total Moto handsets - that is nto going to save the company. And I would bet Motorola was devastated by Google's (the Do No Evil company haha) sudden change in strategy to compete against its partners with the Nexus One phone. That eats directly out of the modest market share that Moto would have aimed for with the Droid/Milestone.

Yeah, the numbers don't lie. If Moto had managed to hold onto its 14 million or so sales level for Q4 and out of that, shited to 2 million smartphones, then yes, not a bad quarter (and they'd still be tied with SonyEricsson for tied 4th place for the year). But no, if they keep bleeding market share and lose half of their customers annually, soon Moto will be smaller than Palm haha...

Thanks for writing. You'll love the 2010 Almanac. It will have updates to all the data obviously but several new charts with more cool stats... Out soon.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

Martin Wilson

Hi Tomi,

Great analysis. At least this paints a fair picture of the state of play in the market at the end of 2009, and rightfully positions players like Apple. It will be very interesting to see if Microsoft can do anything about their slide in 2010.

Also 2010 will be interesting to see the shift in Smartphone share, Japanese manufacturers and players like HTC will be interesting to watch. Although I doubt much will change in the top positions in the All Handset makers top 10 (especially the top 3).

Regards,
Martin

kevin

Apple reported 75 million iPhones/iPod touch at the iPad event. Assuming the number was for 2009 year-end, Apple moved approximately 17m iPod touch in the last 3 quarters (as they had announced 37m total as of end of March qtr). Over the same period, they moved 21.3m iPhones. So the ratio is closing in on 1:1, though the iPad will likely alter that ratio, but also add to the number of iPhone OS units for developers.

Thomas Husson

Hi Tomi,

I have been following you since we met at some conferences a few years ago and quite like when you share some global stats to remind everyone that the industry is a bit too much focused on the US and Western Europe. While I agree with many of your comments, I think you're only telling half the story if you only look at volumes.

What about providing the same ranking by ASP, revenues or even profit? This would be quite a different story, wouldn't it?

Thomas Husson (Forrester)

Martin Wilson

I would suggest the Apple reported sales was cumulative since launch in 2007. Analysis reports suggest there are about 25m - 30m iPhone devices active globally. A big challenge for Apple will be to attract significant volumes of new customers to their phone products and take it out of being a niche - a high percentage of sales are linked to upgrades rather than new converts. As Tomi points out the annual launch of a new product is not aligned to the cycle that many customers upgrade their phones.

Tomi Ahonen

Hi Martin (twice), kevin and Thomas

Thank you all for the comments. Will respond to each

Martin - thanks. Yes will be interesting year ahead and I particularly am curious about those Japanese intentions. As to the second comment - that is particularly interesting to find numbers on the Apple actual installed base, as there are many who are loyalists with the brand, went and bought the first iPhone 2G, then went on to buy the 3G model and again the 3GS model, I don't think its the majority of iPhone users but is a significant minority and will help drive an unusual pattern to their replacement cycle and their installed base.

kevin - thanks. I didn't get to watch the news closely on the iPad launch as I was very heavily involved with real work haha.. but yes, very good. So the total shipped number is now 75M. Very good info. So the total Touch installed base is about 32 million. Thats an impressive number. And I'd guess its replacement cycle is nothing as fast as iPhone so most of those are probably in use. Its quite possible there are currently more Touch's in use than there are actual iPhones haha...

Thomas - Thank you very much and nice to see you here! Haha, yes I'd love to be able to play with the numbers and go through the relative rankings by ASP and by profit haha, but that would be so much more work - and really so far removed from my day job - that I couldn't possibly justify the time. I would suggest playfully, that it could be a nice gift for the industry if Forrester did that? I do occasionally do such analysis to my main focus area, ie the mobile operators and how they do their business - and then make comparisons of market size by subscribers, by revenues and by profits - very illuminating. But no, I hear you but there is simply no time to do that for free here at the CDB blog..., but if you find some such data by another analyst - perhaps those whose job is more closely related to the financial industry for example (financial analysis) then please come here to tell us and I'll do a link - or if you at your blog or Forrester release some reports in that area, will be happy to provide our readers that link.

Thank you all for writing

Tomi Ahonen :-)

cycnus

Hi Tomi,

Good article :). It's good to see a number that is very neutral and not bended to support some company.

Nice to have you in this industry. :)

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It is so informative even though I have not in this industry I must say that i really enjoyed reading this blog there's a lot of valuable information.

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Chandima

Hi,
It's fantastic article enjoy lot and helps my Uni reports.

Thanks
Chandima Abey

Daniel Simson

Superb article Tomi.

thank you very much.

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hi Tomi. Good article. It's now the only source to know market shares.

Thank you very much.

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It is so informative even though I have not in this industry I must say that i really enjoyed reading this blog there's a lot of valuable information.

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It's good to see a number that is very neutral and not bended to support some company. So informative article.

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I find it difficult to subscribe RSS feeds, bookmark this site anyway I have is a very useful and complete information.

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hi Tomi. Good article. It's now the only source to know market shares.

Thank you very much.

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no that some big time money. Just a small percentage of that market would be ok for me :)

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Good numbers, I believe someday mobile phones will finish with the internet.

The comments to this entry are closed.

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