The Apple Q3 Results in Smartphone Wars

So Apple reported its latest quarter results (Apple fiscal Q4 which is however in normal calendars, Q3, as we monitor on this blog). This 'race' is getting to be pretty boring by now, the big 'race' is almost settled. Samsung is running away with the biggest manufacturer title in smartphones, Android dominates the OS wars; Apple is in clear sole second place with no challegers even in view, both in smartphone devices sold and iOS as the platform. Then we have tiny third-place players like RIM, HTC, ZTE, Huawei, Lenovo, LG, Sony etc on the hardware side, and on the operating systems after the big 2, its Blackberry and bada as viable third players, and the vanishing Windows Phone, Symbian and the rest.

So Apple? Good job, with the iPhone 5 launching at the end of Q3 we have seen iPhone sales increase 3% from Q2 and in absolute numbers, from 26.0 million to 26.9 million iPhones. The market share has fallen from 17% to 16% (preliminary). Apple had once again a hideously profitable quarter, so this is all very good news. And for the Christmas Q4 period, the sales of iPhones will hit something like the 45 to 50 million unit level, so this is all prelude for a monster Christmas quarter. Apple's preliminary full year 2012 annual sales market share for smartphones look to be around 20% (up from 19% in year 2011).

So there, what more can I say? Good job Apple and have a great Christmas! Meanwhile this 'analysis' of this 'smartphone bloodbath' is getting to be pretty pointless, where there are no more real challengers for the top positions.. Ah, all good things come to an end, eh? 

For those keeping track, I am modelling 174M smartphones sold in Q3, up a nice 14% from Q2 and on an annual level, 45% growth from Q3 of 2011. As always, we won't know the final number until all 4 of the big analyst houses (Gartner, Strategy Analytics, Canalys and IDC) have reported their final number. I take their average as my number, and we can then calculate the final market shares for this Q3. And the year is still well on track to pass 700 Million smartphone sales, something in the area of 710M to 730M.

Comments

[foo]

Samsung dominates smartphone shipments as Nokia crashes

Apple manages to grow while BlackBerry-maker RIM and Finland's Nokia struggle in fast-moving smartphone market, says IDC

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/26/samsung-apple-smartphones-q3-2012?newsfeed=true

[vladkr]

Hei Tomi,

Apple will release its iPad mini; will you consider it as a small tablet, or as a big iPhone (wifi+cellular model)?

How will it be considered in the statistics ?

[cycnus]

Tomi,

Are you grown tired of running this web site, or the destruction of nokia blog... :)

Anyway,
1.
Why do apple launch their ipad mini?? Do you think Apple starting feel the pressure of 7" Android tablet, that it launch it's ipad mini?

2.
Do you think other android vendor like Sony, LG, HTC, Motorola will rise?
Sony have a solid hardware, but in the beginning of 2012 they don't realize that user want big screen, but their catching up now.
LG is also on the rise with the rumored LG nexus
HTC seems starting to understand the need of 5" device.
Motorola would be interesting next year, since it's bellong to google.

3.
What about nokia raising money?
is there any small print that would make elop able to steal more european money through that event?

4.
RIM,
you seldom write about RIM

[zlutor]

Yes, and Nokia is not in Top 5 smartphone manufacturer...
Great...

[Robert]

Only drama left - when will Nokia finally be stripped of assets and killed.

[cycnus]

Judging by the small number of word use in this post (by tomi), and the tone of the article....
i feel that tomi write this while drunk in a bar or strip club

[n9]

"Why is RIM losing enterprise customers" simple bb7 is far worse than symbian ever was.
Still RIM is floating minimizing market share loses wile it tries to insert its new BB10...

Nokia plan pretty much crashed and burn we will see about RIM's one.

[Winter]

Tomi,

The interesting question now is how fast Smartphones will replace featue phones (1-2 billion) and all other dumbphones (4-5 billion)?

Another interesting question is when the cheap Chinese phonemakers will outsell Samsung in the low end Android market?

[m]

Declaring the end of war before WP8 even gets their pants on, is a prediction that WP8 will be completely irrelevant. I think that's a fairly interesting prediction, that would be very interesting to watch. The war may be over but there must certainly be plenty more casualties to come? Or do you really think it's done, and all that's left for the losers is a slow, boring decline?

[Winter]

@m
MS will be one casualty. Next summer there will have been 1 billion Android phones activated. WP8 still needs to be released. WP8 has all the thrill and cool of the Zune

[John Waclawsky]

WP8 is not new it comes from a long line of failed Microsoft attempts. An older but interesting read at: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Q4.06/2E6D9BB2-FE1B-4556-8389-67BD581FBCCC.html give some history and past patterns of behavior. You can easily update this piece by changing the players names and some product names (except for Microsoft) and see the same patterns. Its simple: NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE!

[Tester]

>> NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE!

Except the press, it seems. It's ridiculous what idiotic things I have read over the last few days - all from people who blindly think that MS equals instant success. Of course the same crap was reported when WP7 was released.

We'll see how many sheep they find who fall for it this time...

[chithanh]

@Winter: Samsung has mostly ceded the low-cost smartphone market to Huawei and ZTE. They have only a couple of phones there which basically sell via the Galaxy brand.

What will happen with Apple is more interesting. Samsung seems determined to not deliver any more smartphone components to Apple[1], question is if Apple can buy them in needed quantities from elsewhere before the supply from Samsung dries up.

[1] http://semiaccurate.com/2012/10/23/apple-vs-samsung-samsung-put-the-boot-in-hard/

[oncemaemodeveloper]

Not really related to smartphone wars in general -- I claim Taskumuro's account of what happened with Nokia and MeeGo is pretty good:

http://taskumuro.com/artikkelit/the-story-of-nokia-meego

It puts a lot of weight on hardware, though. I have no idea if OMAP really was such a big deal.

I know for a fact that Linux can be made to work on almost any hardware. That is the gist of it and Nokia had the expertice. Artem Bityutskiy for one designed the flash-optimized UBI-filesystem working for Nokia. He was not alone. For a while (2008-1010) Nokia was one of the biggest corporate contributors to the Linux kernel, second to noone but Red Hat and Intel.

Elop said Nokians cannot code. I wish we still get an opportunity to show him it is not so.

[cycnus]

@leebase

good one.
I also think the rise of the big screen smartphone make the hardware keyboard become less important because with small 3.5" like apple, the keyboard take 1/2 of the screen when we type, but with a gigantic 5" galaxy note or 4.7" galaxy s3, we still have a screen as big as iphone 3.5" screen while using the soft-keyboard.... but i'm not analyst, and wondering is this true...

[Janne Särkelä]

There's an interesting trend in mobile computing: the ever diminishing physical storage space. In the desktop world we got used to always larger (denser) storage. Now that the consumers are being accustomed to having everything online it allows for the development of new kind of mobile devices, which basically can comprise only of a screen, wireless connectivity and a processor + some cache memory. The processing power can also be distributed on multiple devices over the network. The rigid paradigm is coming to an end, and I wouldn't be surprised by a foldable device coming relatively soon to the market. All of the mayor players are building on the cloud and Microsoft's take is not too bad (You get the same window-puzzle to your data on any device), but they are not as trusted as Samsung or Apple.

Apple's Q3 R&D spending grew 40% from 2011, while Nokia's diminished 15%. Samsung says that 1 in 4 of its employees work in R&D. At least Apple is better be researching if Samsung ceases to deliver tech :) Microsoft is on a tight rope here, because they are not a tech firm although now they are trying with Surface - and Nokia is in difficulties to deliver.

[Winter]

@janne
The next (2) billion smartphones replace cheap feature and dumbphones. There will be no money for expensive data plans or cloud solutions. Very likely many will only use WiFi hotspots for data.

So, local storage and computing will be important factors for some time in the future..

[foo]

IDC: Smartphone Shipments Rise 45%

Smartphones shipments rose 45.2 percent in the third quarter compared to the same year-ago period, says IDC. In total, mobile phone makers shipped in 179.7 million smartphones in 3Q12.

http://www.datamation.com/mobile-wireless/idc-smartphone-shipments-rise-45.html

[cycnus]

@Janne & @Winter

First @Janne,
I also used to believe that data plan were too expensive, but seeing on how data plan price were going down, and the speed of 4G, I think in the very near future (1 or 2 year from now) most notebook might have some 4G module.

@Winter
But.... I also think local storage is also important.
1. The Megapixel in camera is getting bigger, video recording capabilities is also getting better. It would be nice if I can go on vacation and don't need to bring the notebook because my phone got 128GB or 256GB storage.
2. Entertainment... Game size is also getting bigger, for example the game soccer 2012 is almost 1 GB. and i think it won't take long until 1 game in phone/tablet hit 2GB - 4GB.
3. Movie, Song, etc.

[newbie reader]

There's ***more action pending in the tablet/phablet market***

In Q3 2012 Apple lost 10% of market share to Android, but still

pretty strong with over 50%.

But until now, ***Samsung hasn't really tried to dismount Apple*** from N1 there, busy with SGS3 and Note. Galaxy tabs used to be pretty weak

hardware-wise.

That time is over. New Google/Samsung Nexus 10 has better 300ppi

screen than iPad4 and newest A15 Exynos 5xxx 32nm.

Chinese also aim to tap high end of tablet market, see this funny

"slice an Apple on Huawei MediaPad 10 FHD" video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_k9bThlSwM

Cheap 4-core 28nm MTK6588 CPU is coming at the end of this year.

Apple puts its foot into 7" market with iPad Mini.

Besides smartphones and 10" tablets, I see two other well-defined

markets.

One is form-factor of around 5", Note-like phablets. Buyer gave up idea of *comfortable* phone calls, in favor of bigger screen.

Another is 7" (my personal choice btw) Buyer gave up idea of *any* phone calls, in favor of even bigger screen for apps, but should still fit easily into the pockets.

My personal consumer choices right now are
1. Feature phone //Nokia :)// for hassle-free phone calls
2. To be carried with 7" Android tablet (big screen, but still mobile)
Used for all needy smartphone things like browsing, emails etc.
3. Good old powerful desktop. I'm notebooks hater.

Here (if consumers share my choices) I see a good chance for rise of alternative smartphone vendors.

That is, if I to choose one-device-for-all, it's surely Android/iPhone (=Samsung/Apple)

However, once I opted smartphone jobs to 7-tablet, I need a very different kind of the phone for the rest of it. (in my case it is good old feature phone, but it is rather a substitute and not a new purchase)

Battery-effective, small, very reliable, bug-free proprietary, exellent cam and music. Tons of apps are not necessary. Good old keys for blind use, I may add.

OS-wise, some RIMM QNX *RTOS* phone could fit nicely here.