Congratulations Apple you are indeed now biggest smartphone maker: and Top 6 smartphone ranking Q2

We now have heard from Samsung Q2 results. Unfortunately as they often do, they did not give us the smartphone unit sales number in their Q2 results. So we had to wait for some other ways to get it. And today two of the big 4 analyst houses have called the Samsung Q2 number at 19.0 million.

We knew already that Apple had toppled Nokia who was last quarter still the biggest smartphone maker. But we didn't know until now, if Apple also got the crown. They did.

Wow! Congratulations Apple! In four short years you took the global smartphone market, what can be said to be the hottest and most-contested industry right now - and you won! Wow. Number 1. Congratulations!

Congratulations also to Samsung for passing Nokia, very strong growth continues. And sad to see the 15 year reign by Nokia come to an end, but you would have expected Nokia to put up more of a fight, to drop from 1st to 3rd in only one quarter, that is bad news for Nokia.

I have only 2 of the big 4 analyst houses having given their total smartphone industry number for Q2, so I can't give a certain market share count yet, but we can do the rankings for the top 8. They are as follows for Q2 (and ranking in previous quarter ie Q1):

1 - Apple . . . . . . . . . 20.3 M . . . (2)
2 - Samsung . . . . . . 19.0 M . . . (4)
3 - Nokia . . . . . . . . . 16.7 M . . . (1)
4 - RIM . . . . . . . . . .  13.3 M . . . (3)
5 - HTC . . . . . . . . . . 11.0 M . . . (5)
6 - LG . . . . . . . . . . .   5.4 M . . . (7)
7 - SonyEricsson . . .   5.3 M . . . (6)
8 - Motorola . . . . . . .   4.4 M . . . (8)

I will be coming with more analysis and hope to find a number for Android/bada/Windows split for Samsung from somewhere. But here the ranking list

PS - on a personal note.. Who told you first, eh? We broke the story here on this blog that Apple had passed Nokia, already on June 6, seven weeks before the numbers had come out and five weeks before anyone else started to call it for Apple. I would like to hope that the readers of this blog get some value out of my ramblings, haha..

Comments

[PERUS]

Very nice article indeed! Apple has also more cash then the US gov.
http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-has-more-cash-on-hand-than-the-us-government-2011-7

[ex-nokia]

i have my doubts on the samsung figures, since it is a big jump from q111 or q110. until the company officially release it, its not fair to nokia n the resrt

[Frank]

What is a Nokia? Apple and Sammy now rule the world.......

Apple is King, Money rules them all!

[Alan]

Sammy going to take Q3 crown for sure, unless Apple releases Iphone5 with out further delays.

[virgil]

Glad to see I was mostly right, Sammy didn't quite make it to $20M, but it was close. A bit surprising is the strong AAPL performance, I clearly continue to underestimate them.
But I do hope Sammy will take over the crown in Q3. It depends a lot on the level of excitement that Google will manage to generate with Ice-cream Sandwich... if it's anywhere near what they did with Froyo, I hope Apple will finally reach a plateau (yes, I don't like the influence Apple has on the market, and the new "closed garden" direction pioneered by them ).

[symbianlover]

apple rules and their design will be taken as standard and references by all mobile UI and UX designers worldwide.

Meanwhile, Nokia era is gone due to their own mistakes.

[KPOM]

Samsung really came out of nowhere, didn't they? No wonder they and Apple are engaged it bitter lawsuits right now. The latest salvo is that the ITC has ruled against Apple on the grounds that the Intel HD 3000 graphics violate some of S3s patents (Samsung is acquiring S3).

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9218715/Macs_infringe_S3_patents_could_face_U.S._import_ban

That said, it's questionable whether the S3 patents will hold up. But still, it's pretty clear that the top spot in smartphone sales is Samsung's to lose.

[Beth]

Sad part is that Apple is dominating with a year old phone! Wonder why ppl are queuing up to buy a costly old phone with 40% profit margin for OEM. C'mon Samsung, HTC.. step it up a notch

[Bob]

but Piot, Tomi never expected Nokia to abandon Symbian.

[Peter]

Korean companies like samsung/lg have strong bribery culture. IN ORDER TO sell one cell phone, they can give 90% profit to wireless carrier. Never invest in them. No profit IMHO.

[Aaron]

Samsung keeping mum
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/samsung-goes-mum-with-phone-and-tablet-sales-stats/2011/07/29/gIQAKrb6gI_story.html

[Aviezer Eilat]

Hi,

HTC numbers are wrong.
Should read 12.1 M for the 2nd quarter.

Aviezer

[khim]

Guys, I think you are too obsessed with Apple. Seriously. If you want "wrong undiscussed predictions" then take look here (article from December 08, 2009):
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2009/12/us-west-coast-drunk-on-iphone-yes-but-android-is-not-the-answer.html

With "pearls" like this:
"If the iPhone is the Cadillac, then the Android is not Ford or Toyota, the Android is Maserati. If Apple is the Cadillac as a niche luxury product, then Android as Maserati, is a far far more niche, more rare luxury product."

"I would bet quite a big amount of money and my reputation, that next year, Android will not match Apple's first year splash with the iPhone, regardless of what price point there is a given Android phone."

Of course the very same article contained the following:
"If Apple drops its price dramatically (or in other ways totally changes its marketing strategy - such as what I have been advocating on this blog for two years now, to spread their product range to more than one current phone model per year) then yes, they can break away from the Cadillac analogy. But as long as its a 600 dollar phone, it will be under 1% globally. Can't escape that."

The explanation is obvious: it's very hard to predict the future and even best analysts are often wrong. It's just funny how previous time when Apple stumbled Tomi spent a lot of time trying to understand the problem and had special article but Android went from "a far far more niche, more rare luxury product" to "It is not the iPhone that is killing Nokia, it is Google's Android" without separate discussion.

P.S. And the very same article had the following comment: "It's reach will rapidly become very big indeed. It will overtake iPhone in 2010, it is seriously challenging incumbants; and I'd expect to see a Nokia phone running Android within 3 years (if they are still even building hardware then! ;-)". Pretty interesting for the end of 2009?

[Eurofan]

I'm glad Tomi is at least tackling the big questions with this blog and also addressing the heart rending self-destruction of Nokia. A Nokia turn-around would be a miracle at this point. The N9 team has created a tremendous product against all the odds in that dysfunctional organization. I have no confidence in Elop and his "leadership team."

[Eurofan]

@Baron95, I must say, Baron, I am a fan of your postings, too. Hope that doesn't lower your opinion of yourself! But seriously, I think every one of the dozens of pre-release reviews I have read on wireless industry web-sites has concluded with either, I'm going to buy it even though its end of line or I would buy it but its end of line (more the former than the latter). That's pretty good. Tomi makes a lot of analogies to cars and gets shot down for that. But one thing is true about both, they're commonly owned items in the modern world. If the car industry can support dozens of manufactures and brands I don't see why the wireless phone/computer industry can't support dozens of brands, too. People want choice. There is no rush to solve all the design problems now. The industry will be there in ten years time, too, and there will then be dozens of manufactures and brands, then too. There will be many more cell phones than cars and turnover will be vastly greater. Nokia needs to survive for ten years, not solve all its market problems in one dramatic switch of strategy. Yes I think the N9 is a tremendous accomplishment and I hope it sells well in its test markets. It would make some money for Nokia. I really would be surprised if Nokia's WP is anything but a market dud. The iPhone 5 will be out there and your beloved dual core dual tail pipe Android phones will be out there. People will be looking for alternatives and I don't think anything that has the cursed brand name "Microsoft" (which to most people means crashes and confusion) will sell in this environment. The quasi Meego phones could succeed at the top end of the market and a pared down and more polished set of Symbian offerings could maintain some sort of profitable presence in the low end and email specialized areas of the smartphone space. Nokia needs to maintain some profitability. That's not going to come from being the tenth manufacturer to try to turn the market cursed Microsoft phone system into successful offering. Like cars, smart cell phones are emotion charged objects. When tech writers left and right declare I'd buy this phone unlocked just to have it and hold it in my hand even though its been publicly orphaned by its parent, that's a design accomplishment. And as much as the hardware design compliments the phone, the N9 is primarily a software design accomplishment. I just read on another blog that the harmatten design is as much a meld of WebOS and Zune UI's as anything else. Its truly a mutt and an orphan. But like Telly Sevalis or John Wayne or Marilyn Monroe it has star power, charisma. I could go on. Right now I just don't want Nokia to totally gut the team behind the N9. Nokia is going to need this team in six months when it becomes clear that Microsoft has as much cache in today's cell phone market as Yugo used to have in America in the '80s. It's a dead brand. People hate it because they're forced to use it at work and when they've tried to use it at home and in portable devices its meant crashes, viruses, pop-ups and cluster.

[Tony]

I kind of hate saying this but Apple really raised the bar. iPhone 4 is beautiful piece of hardware while operating system is fast, stable and easy to use.

It's pretty funny to watch N9 fanboys rally around the phone which exists only in YouTube.

[Eurofan]

Baron, Lee, Peter, Rodrigr, Khim, et al:

It's a long snippet, but here is an interesting insider's view of the N9's software development. I can see why Lee and others would argue that Nokia can't do software based on this snippet. On the other hand, the beginnings of most great efforts in competitive industries are a often a total mess behind the facade. There was a lot of pressure on this project. The N9 effort was Nokia's moon shot, its last chance at indepence. Maybe Nokia could learn from the N9 effort and reorganize its processes and management personnel to reflect those lessons. It's from the following link,

http://www.intomobile.com/2011/06/22/nokia-engineer-calls-out-stephen-elop-killing-meego-says-he-has-no-idea-hes-talking/

Anyway, here goes a snippet from a frustrated insider:

[Quote]

Ok, People try to be polite, but the real deal is : The software team at nokia, (focus on it's management / directors but including the amazingly big number of do-nothing finnish SW engineers ) specially the one behind maemo was a huge failure. This phone now only exists because Nokia bought Qt and even with that nobody stopped to take a look at the application framework and all the mess that the rush made it become.

So... Why the hell it took 7 years to announce (not launch) a device that is possibly competitive - we didn't use it - to the iPhone or android? Why? Why It was first Gnome, with GTK then with Clutter now with Qt and QML ? Who on earth puts a Symbian "architect" with no Linux dev experiment to be the "Systems architect" of a Linux platform? Why on earth you need 200 engineers on the US (Boston) doing a browser that was the worst fork ever of Webkit?

Guys, If Mr. Elop is right or not, only time will tell, but let's face it the real villain are those that are now crying to "look how meego is good". Let's not forget the time they had with Maemo to show competitiveness and failed. Not once, not twice. As a head of a company you simply say "Enough" and move on.

The good part: the UI
- Even this, the higher point of anything of this device, was HANDED to the UK team, headed first by an Ex Microsoft guy (responsible for the UI on the ZUNE HD) that left because the software team was simply impossible to commit, and later with the guy behind the WebOS UI - that at least was able to DEMAND a new font that was so desperately needed.

This was a simple statement : Enough with this design team here ( in the Maemo / helsinki team ) Let's move it somewhere we can make real design. But even in London they needed some changes (hence the new heads) to make it happen.

The real problem that nobody likes to admit is: Nokia was and still flooded with incompetent people in the areas that became massive important. Now it's slowly firing / retiring them... and we are seeing the improves.. BUT IT WAS NOT enough.

Nokia nailed hardware, logistics, but software? Sorry, it didn't. (Not lack of individual, brilliant minds) but the massive amount of do-nothings and heads with no clue of what they were doing. Develop core software for your phone across 11 countries using standard IT consultants like Accenture and others to do Linux software? Who on earth will integrate this?

Blé.

[unquote]

[PERUS]

@Eurofan: Nokia has more product owner/manager than real engineers. The engineers are mostly hired externally or sub-contracted. This has been a company "culture" for ages under OPK but this should change under Elop.

Yes, WebKit with s60 browser was a big mess. It was done mostly by incompetence external engineers. An easy example they were using many RArray instances without calling Close at the end.

Bought QT but didn't manage it properly was a huge failure under OPK.

[DeeDee Cupsize]

@Tony Unlike N9, which really exist and have been previewed, iPhone 5 doesn't exist at all. Not even in YouTube. It's just a rumour. So iPhone 5 fanboys must be really hilarious to you. Right?

At least 50% of iPhone 4's reputation is hype. Phone that shatters when dropped is anything but good hardware. What kind of idiots make a phone that has all glass backside? And then there's the antenna. Both true facepalms of design.

And what bars did it raise? I can't think of any. Except the profit margin bar. It has nothing truly special. The screen has the highest resolution but then it's black level is not so good being an lcd. iPhone 4 is just an upgrade from 3GS. A little bit better than 3GS, except the antenna and the glass backside. Nothing innovative or special. Just because a lot of people are willing to buy an overpriced status symbol, doesn't make it the greatest phone. Just like billions and billions of flies liking shit, doesn't make it the greatest food.

[vvaz]

iP4 is winning because now it is selling to ultimate clients with extremely low prices. In UK you can get free iP4 with contract as low as 40 GBP.