Apple Q3 Results, major milestones reached by iPhone... and Apple the Computer Maker too

I have had very heavy travel past few weeks and many items I need to cover on the blog including a couple of very interesting conferences, several very clever services and now is also the time of quarterly results for smartphone makers so there is the 'bloodbath' updates also due this month. So I will keep this short.

(Note: has addition on Oct 29, about Apple now being in Top 5)

Apple announced results for the July-September quarter (Q3 in calendar quarters). The iPhone unit sales exceeded most expectations and reached 14.1 million units. The unit sales had remained flat for the previous three quarters at about 8.4 million to 8.75 million and obviously the 14.1 million level is a record for Apple.

As to market share, 14.1 million units gives Apple roughly a 20% market share in smartphones, a huge jump from 13% in the previous quarter and exceeding Apple's previous peak market share a year before of 17%.

If previous patterns hold, and Apple only continue to release one new iPhone model per year, then this level of sales of about 14 million iPhones per quarter would mean annual sales of about 45 million for the full calendar year 2010. Counting back 12 months (as the July-September quarter is Apple's fiscal fourth quarter), Apple has sold 40 million iPhones in the past year, a big number.

There are several significant milestones that happened this quarter. First of all, most obviously, Apple passed RIM for the first time ever, now that the iPhone outsold the Blackberry for this quarter. Do recall that RIM also grew sales for this past quarter, and RIM has been growing unit sales every quarter quarter-on-quarter, so if the previous pattern holds, and Apple sales are now going to be flat for the next 3 quarters, RIM may claw back its lead and return to being the second-biggest smartphone maker around Q1 of 2011. But Apple's current lead over RIM is considerable so its unlikely RIM could jump back to second place during this current 'Christmas' Quarter of October to December.

(This para is added on 29 October, sorry for missing it out originally..) Secondly - Apple has now crashed into the Top 5 of global handset makers! It was just a year ago that Apple entered the top 10 handset makers, as the second of the 'pure smartphone makers' to enter the chart where obviously the cheaper dumbphones would dominate due to their volumes of sales. But now Apple has leapfrogged RIM, and it depends essentially on ZTE performance, on whether Apple is 4th or 5th, and whether the last of the top 5 is ZTE or RIM. But Apple is definitely now one of the world's 5 largest mobile phone manufacturers. This is an astonishing achievement considering that they only make smartphones, that the unsubsidised price of the iPhone is about 5 times more than the average of all phones sold worldwide, and most of all, that Apple has managed this with only one new phone model released per year! (imagine how much more market success Apple would have, if the decided to expand their product line and introduce say a lower cost 'iPhone Nano' model and release two new phones per year..) The top 3 are far beyond Apple's reach for now, where Nokia sells 110 million per quarter, Samsung over 60 million and LG about 30 million. But Apple is certainly in the Top 5, and may be as high as the 4th biggest mobile phone manufacturer worldwide, this past quarter. Considering there are about 40 major manufacturers globally, including many that have been in this business for more than a decade (Motorola, Sony and Ericsson, Alcatel, Panasonic, Sharp, etc) - and that Apple achieved it in only 3 years, this is a truly remarkable achievement. Congratulations Apple. Do not listen to the grumpy old man over at Communities Dominate blog, just keep doing what you are doing, and you will continue to change the world of mobile for the better. I take my hat off and salute you!

Thirdly, less obviously, Apple achieved a major milestone in quarterly sales. Yes, it passed the 10 million smartphone unit sales level per quarter - by a wide margin too - but more relevantly, three years ago in 2007 the July-September quarter was the first full quarter of iPhone sales. So the iPhone has only been sold now for 12 full quarters (3 years). And the original sales target for the iPhone for its first year, was to sell 10 million iPhones (something that I believed in, and obviously something that happened). Now just three years later, Apple sells over 10 million iPhones per quarter. That is impressive.

There is another milestone that the 14.1 million level achieves. It is that Apple has now achieved the level of selling 'more than half' of the biggest smartphone maker, Nokia. Nokia sold 26.5 million smartphones in the third quarter, and has in the past sold so many more smartphones, that the second biggest smartphone maker (which for the past four years has been RIM) never sold half the level of Nokia. Now Apple has achieved that level and is obviously closing on Nokia, even as Nokia too is growing unit sales.

WHO IS BIGGEST COMPUTER MAKER?

Looking a bit beyond just mobile phones, Apple also is gobbling up market share in personal computers. Apple does not break out the iPod Touch unit sales, but analysts suggest the iPod Touch sales levels have been at about 60% of the level of iPhones. So we could estimate that for Q3 the amount of iPod Touch'es sold was about 8.5 million.

When we add 4.1 million iPad sales and 3.9 million Mac PCs, we get to a combined 30.6 million personal computers of any kind, if smartphones are included in the definition of computers sold. Bear in mind, that is how all of the big 6 PC makers now define the smartphone, that it is a computer. So where just three years ago Apple wasn't even in the top 5 biggest PC makers if only counting the Mac sales, this quarter's performance in computer sales would give Apple an annual level of about 122.4 million computers sold - thats twice the level of what the world's biggest computer maker, Hewlett-Packard sold worldwide last year! Even Nokia making only smartphones cannot now match the quarterly performance of computers of all kind, sold by Apple. The difference is that clever bit of niche marketing Apple did with the market positioning of the gadget they introduced to us as the iPad.

Now, this is the milestone moment for Apple in Q3, it is not the actual final count for the full calendar year 2010 (they may get that too, but we won't know until Q4 numbers are reported). As of now, going forward, Apple is the world's biggest computer maker and will be so over the next 12 months. Whether it actually achieves that during calendar 2010 remains to be seen, but Apple is so far ahead of HP, that if we use the reasoning that smartphones are computers, and by that logic for calendar year 2009, Apple was third biggest behind HP and Nokia, this year definitely Apple has grown bigger than HP in making computers (congratulations!). Not bad as a come-back by those guys who made the original Apple PC all those decades ago, and who were counted by many as utterly dead as computer makers when they were producing quarter after quarter of losses in the 1990s, or whose market share in computers was counted as about 3% as recently as 2006. Must be a sweet feeling over there in Cupertino, the come-back kids, eh? Also a sense of irony, that Apple dropped 'computer' from its corporate name only three years ago, to then re-emerge and become the planet's biggest computer maker..

A bit moment for Apple. And regardless of exactly when the full-year numbers will tell the story, from this point on, Apple is definitely the world's biggest computer maker, where with Macs, iPads and iPod Touch'es helping the iPhone outsell Nokia branded smartphones and computers - and both giant smartphone makers dwarfing HP, Dell, Acer and other more PC oriented computer makers. Congratulations Apple the world's biggest computer maker, and for passing RIM to take second place in smartphones in only 3 years from launch - and selling more smartphones now in one quarter, than they did in their first full year - that itself a world record launch of a new branded mobile phone at the time.

Comments

[asics shoes wholesale]

That was a great piece of information., I enjoyed reading it..,

[white iphone 4]

White iphone 4 avaiable! It's a great news to tell you the latest white iphone 4 Conversion Kit is on sale. Get the chance to make your iphone more charming!

[prom evenning dresses]

how interesting your post look forword your new post

[white iphone 4]

Thank you for taking the time to publish this information very useful!I'm still waiting for some interesting thoughts from your side in your next post thanks.http://www.whiteiphone4.com

[Rate md]

I think its a superb information.

[iphone cases]

Chaque fois que je vois blogs aussi bon que ce que je sais que je devrais cesser de surf et de commencer à travailler sur le mien!

[backpack]

I recently came across your article and have been reading along. I want to express my

admiration of your writing skill and ability to make readers read from the beginning to the

end. I would like to read newer posts and to share my thoughts with you.

[Jerri]

Wow that is a lot of iPads, it is no wonder why Apple is such a huge success. Kinda makes me jealous as I am trying to start my online company!

[Plantronics wireless headset]

I think that hellodirect sells the ipads very cheap, you may want to go check these out!

[Plantronics wireless headset]

Apple is definitely taking over the market and their Apple iPhone is the winner!

[Plantronics telephone headset]

White iPhone, truly amazing I want one! There have been good raffles on iBids.com, check it out!

[Plantronics wireless headset]

Very good info, apple makes the best iPhones!

[Louboutin sale]

Very good info, apple makes the best iPhones!

[Cyprus SEO]

Tomi Ahonen’s analysis is, as usual, spot on. Just yesterday I was talking to someone about how Apple was, despite being a “top 10″ manufacturer of mobile phones, was making substantially more profit on smartphones than any other manufacturer.

Now I know they’re in the top 5 globally, and I suspect it’s only a matter of time before they hit the top 3. That has to be scary to my friends at Nokia, who are still the top manufacturer by a long shot, but are slowly but surely continuing to lose ground to Apple.

[cheap jewelry]

I like what you have said,it is really helpful to me,thanks!

[pandora]

good article,if you want to know information,you can visit our website http://www.hotpandorajewelry.com/.

[organic seo service]

If you need more traffic to your website check out the website in my name. It really helped me and i think it can help your website.

[ถ่ายวีดีโอพรีเซนเทชั่น]

I am really impressed along with your writing abilities and also with the layout on your blog. Is that this a paid topic or did you customize it your self? Either way keep up the nice quality writing, it's uncommon to see a nice blog like this one these days..