A Week is a Long Time in Smartphone Bloodbath - AT&T, HTC, Microsoft

We had the quarterly results from Apple and Nokia which were the big news in the Smartphones bloodbath for last week. Both companies had further bad press, Apple around Antennagate on which I did some math about the real scale of Apple's numbers, and Nokia around rumors that the CEO may be replaced. But there was more news in the 2010 smartphones bloodbath.

AT&T

AT&T reported numbers that for Q2 there were 3.2M iPhones activated (which is up 19%) leaves only 5.2M for rest of world (which is down 14%). The big reason why the rest of the world is down in Q2 is that the new iPhone 4 was only launched in 5 countries, so the AT&T proportion will be more than normal. This is not a sign of problems for the iPhone abroad.

We also learned from Yankee Group that the average household income of iPhone owners is 100,000 dollar household vs 85,000 dollars for other smartphone owners (the US median household income is 52,000 dollars according to US Census Bureau). No big surprise that the iPhone has highest earners, but note that the Blackberry is by far the most common US employee phone smartphone, for mostly mid and senior management. They are well paid. So with that in mind, yes the iPhone is in a very high price bracket as a luxury good, and far from a mass market consumer device.

Death grip - Switzerland becomes second country to delay iPhone 4 launch until Antennagate is fixed. And IDC survey from Friday of Apple's Antennagate press conference reported that 2/3 of existing iPhone owners will delay iPhone 4 purchases until antenna is fixed. Bad news for Apple as most iPhone 4 sales were to existing customers. They still say all phones they can manufacture are sold, and there are week-long waiting periods, but that is temporary and now diminished. They might have had 3 week waiting periods through to October haha, now the waiting periods will soon subside as Apple ships its next batches to stores, if existing iPhone owners stay away. Meanwhile Apple continues to keep the Death Grip Antennagate in the news. After its press conference Apple added a Nokia and a Motorola smartphone to its video collection, which to me seems like a bad strategy of remining users of Antennagate and keeping it in the press.

(Personally I think Apple will bring a new variant of the iPhone 4 which will be called something clearly different, to try to move away from the Death Grip problem very soon and bring those customers back who are waiting).

Microsoft

Microsoft revealed the launch partner phone makers for its new OS, Phone 7. The phone makers are Samsung, LG, Dell, Acer and HTC. Only two of the five are major handset makers, as Samsung and LG are numbers 2 & 3 among the world's top 10 biggest dumbphone makers. The maker conspicuous in its absence is Motorola, which did provide Windows Mobile smartphones but has apparently abandoned the Microsoft family. Samsung, LG and HTC all provide Android phones already so it remains to be seen how eager they are to provide major support to Phone 7. As Samsung has its own Bada OS, don't expect huge effort by Samsung to support Phone 7. And HTC is the bestselling Android maker so it would seem they would put most their effort to retaining the lead on the fastest-growing smartphone OS platform. But it is also possible especially for LG to do a differentiation strategy against SonyEricsson, Motorola and ZTE, by focusing on Phone 7. We have to see and monitor the developments.

In other MS news, it was revealed (but not confirmed) that AT&T has committed to selling 8 million Phone 7 smartphones from Microsoft. But while that number may seem big, remember that AT&T sells more than 12 million iPhones annually, so it does not yet spell awesome success for Phone 7. 

HTC

HTC has said they will launch 6 more smartphones before the end of 2010.

RIM

Blackberry maker RIM Admitted it didn't see the kids coming.. That it took RIM by surprise to find all the youth around the world falling in love with the Blackberry.

That is the rest of the news in the smartphones space. We will keep monitoring the Bloodbath wars here at the Communities Dominate blog

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