Rare Synch of Regional Quarterly Data Gives View to Regional Split Top 3 Smartphones

This is a rare treat. We get occasional updates of regional market shares for smartphones but it seems almost impossible to find two such regions reported in the same quarter, and we thus can't get solid split of smartphone shipments on a regional basis. But the stars were kindly aligned for Q3 - as both Canalys reported US market shares, and Strategy Analytics reported Western European market shares for smartphones for the same quarter. Together these two regions account for half of the world's smarthphones, so we can now offer rare insights into the Top 3 smartphone makers - Nokia, RIM and Apple, on how their markets are split, by units sold (not by revenue).

Note that the two analyst houses did not report uniform total numbers - their total count of smartphones for Q3 differed by 5% (which is typical variation), so please recognize, these numbers are not directly comparable. But they are 'close enough' to give us the insights, at least to the level of a free blog story, eh?

The world according to these two analysts is split like this: Rest of the World has 50% fo all smartphones sold in Q3 of 2010 (40 Million), 26% in North America (21M) and 24% in Western Europe (19M). The total quarter was 80M

Now, Nokia - the market for their smartphones is clearly 'rest of world' because their average smartphone price is less than a third of that of Apple and about half that of RIM. Nokia's smartphones were sold 76% in Rest of World, 23% in Western Europe and only 1% of Nokia smartphones sold in North America. (Number for Rest of World is corrected on 17 Dec, thanks maxxfi for noticing the typo)

RIM's best market is North America, no surprise, where it sells 41% of its Blackberries. RIM sells 35% of its Blackberries in the Rest of the World, and 24% in Western Europe.

Apple meanwhile sells 39% of the iPhones in North America, its second best market is Western Europe where it sells 33% of all iPhones and 28% in the Rest of the World.

Fascinating. I wish we had this kind of splits reported more often. Nothing dramatically surprising to me out of the above data, very consistent with my consultancy internal analysis, and I'll be having some good regional smartphone and dumbphone data in the new upcoming TomiAhonen Phone Book that I hope to have out very soon.

Comments

[maxxfi]

Tomi, sorry but something doesn't add up:

RIM: 41 + 35 +24 = 100%
Apple: 39 + 33 + 28 = 100%

Nokia: 51 + 32 + 1 = 84 % ???
There must be a part of the world that is not included
in the Rest of the World cited in the statistics :-P

[Eric]

For Nokia, Tomi probably meant 51 + 32 + 17 = 100%. Just my guess

[Gijsbertjan]

There is no way that Nokia is selling 17% of it's smartphones in North America....

[Gijsbertjan]

its, sorry

[Tomi Ahonen]

haha, what happened? Thanks maxxfi. And no, Eric, the US smartphone penetration for Nokia is indeed 1%. Let me go through the numbers again. Sorry..

Tomi :-)

[Tomi Ahonen]

Ok, found it (and corrected it). The Rest of World number for Nokia is 76%. Sorry. I listed a number from a wrong column..

Thanks for noticing it!

Tomi :-)

[Claus212]

Tomi,
please have another look at your table. Right now your numbers for Nokia are:

Nokia: 76% + 32% + 1% = 109%

So there is still something wrong (I assume Rest of World number is 67%).

Do you also have numbers handy how many units each of the three companies sold?

Thanks!

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[alex]

I am actually surprised to see that Apple is the geographically most balanced of the top 3. They lost their US centricity; apparently after entering new countries and giving up most of their exclusive operator relationships. US percentage might increase again with the expected cdma capable iPhone.

[Bob Shaw]

The big difference between US and non-US market is the pricing model by the carriers. In US a good chunk of carrier contract tend to be post paid (2 year contract) and thus the cost of the smart phone is not significant as a percentage of the total cost for 2 years. In non-US markets, a good chunk of the carrier contract tend to be pre-paid and thus the cost of the smart phone tends to be an issue. The market for smart phones outside US will tend to be very sensitive to the price of the smart phone.

[Tomi Ahonen]

Arghh.. yeah, thanks Claus212 - I didn't notice I apparently took all numbers from the wrong column for Nokia, and didn't see that being 32% (should have been 23%). So the numbers should have read 76%, 23% and 1% for Nokia. Now it is (finally) correct. Thank you

I will return to comment to the others later

Tomi :-)

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I am actually surprised to see that Apple is the geographically most balanced of the top 3. They lost their US centricity, apparently after entering new countries and giving up most of their exclusive operator relationships.

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[Magnus]

@Bob Shaw: that is an interesting observation. Here in Sweden, most phones are sold at subsidised cost with a 2 year contract, and I had thought that this was a common pattern in Europe at least.

When talking of non-US markets, where is the prepaid model most common? Europe, Asia or somewhere else?

/M

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Arghh.. yeah, thanks Claus212 - I didn't notice I apparently took all numbers from the wrong column for Nokia, and didn't see that being 32% (should have been 23%). So the numbers should have read 76%, 23% and 1% for Nokia. Now it is (finally) correct. Thank you

I will return to comment to the others later

Tomi :-)