First Look into Final 2012 full year market shares for smartphones and OS wars, the Top 3 are settled on both

The full-year 2012 race for smartphones has its Top 3 settled for both handsets and operatin systems. We have the RIM results for Q4 - 6.9 million units which is down 7% from Q3 and gives Blackberry about 3% market share now in Q4 both in hardware and the operating system race. It also gives us the numbers we need to be able to verify the top 3 for the full year for 2012, both in smartphone handset market and the OS market.


PLEASE NOTE - the actual numbers are now in (February 13, 2013) so please read the full Q4 and end of year 2012 smartphone market share numbers here. 



The top 3 in handsets for 2012 are settled. The exact number & market share are of course waiting for Q4 results data out in January, but the relative rankings are settled. The year was won by Samsung and Android. Congratulations. Here is the definite Top 3 for both charts, and the number range to expect for total sales for the year and market share as my best guesstimate.

TOP 3 SMARTPHONE MANUFACTURERS 2012
1 Samsung . . . . 220M - 235M units about 32% market share
2 Apple . . . . . . . 140M - 150M units about 20% market share
3 Huawei . . . . . . . 55M - 60M units about 8% market share
Race for 4th is between Sony, ZTE, Nokia and RIM (about 5% each)
Others in Top 10 for the year are HTC, LG and Lenovo (about 4% each)
Motorola has fallen out of the top 10 in global smartphone makers for hte full year
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Estimates December 21, 2012
This data may be freely shared

And in the operating systems we also have most of the Top 6 settled, with only the race for fourth place still open, between Samsung's bada and Nokia's Symbian. This is the Top 3 definite and the other races for the top 6 operating systems in smartphones for the full year 2012

TOP 3 SMARTPHONE OPERATING SYSTEMS FULL YEAR 2012
1 Android . . . . . . 465M - 485M about 66% market share
2 iOS . . . . . . . . . 140M - 150M about 20% market share
3 Blackberry . . . . . 33M and about 5% market share
4th will be race between Samsung's bada and Nokia's Symbian (about 3% either)
Windows Phone is definitely going to be ranked 6th operating system by sales in 2012 (about 2%)
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Estimates December 21, 2012
This data may be freely shared

The top 3 are definite for the year. I will keep monitoring the rest of the info. I cannot fail to observe the irony of it being now nearly two years from the Elop Effect and when Stephen Elop of Nokia exchanged the world's most used smartphone OS, Symbian, to a tiny start-up with 2% market share, Windows Phone. Now, almost two years later, Symbian has tumbled losing 9 out of every 10 customers it had, and even for this year, Symbian still outsold all of Windows Phone, even after those highly-hyped Lumia smartphones released by Nokia all through this year. What does the highly-promised 'third ecosystem' Windows Phone do today, after all those Nokia sacrifices? It will end the year with about 2% market share!! Yes, with full Nokia's sales power behind it, massacre'ing 29% of Nokia's Symbian market share, Elop has not moved the Windows Phone market share needle even by one percent!!! Windows Phone had 2% market share in Q4 of 2010, exactly two years ago, before this partnership was announced and now we know for a fact, Windows Phone will end with 2% for this full year market share after Nokia is fully oboard. Pathetic! Yeah. Dumbest management move of all time, no doubt. Why is Elop allowed to run the company? He is the most incompetent CEO of all time.

And PS - if you are still drinking that Windows cool-aid by Steve Ballmer, why is HTC reducing the availability of its low-cost Windows Phone handset the 8S including ending its US sales - while the world market in smartphones is shifting to lower-cost smartphones? And why is HTC also not releasing its promised large-screen Windows Phone 8 based smartphone? If Windows Phone was the success Ballmer (and Elop) are hyping, then HTC should be happily onboard. Look at the reality of the market, not the hype from the delusional CEOs... I warned you that Microsoft has poisoned all carrier relationships after it bought Skype. Since then the Windows partnership has lost Sony, LG, Dell (Motorola had already left) and now Samsung is shifting its focus in 2013 to Tizen. HTC is diminshing its involvement and Nokia is the dead man walking, about to drop out of the Top 10 biggest smartphone makers. Is this a 'healthy' third ecosystem or is this the last gasps of a smartphone platform that should be allowed to die in peace. Just for full year 2010, Windows smartphones on both Windows Mobile and Windows Phone had 5% market share and many of its partners were struggling even then.. Isn't it about time for Microsoft to admit, Windows on smartphones is another Zune, another Kin, another dead path..

For the installed base, we know the full Top 6. That race is so clear, the rankings are totally settled

TOP 4 SMARTPHONE OPERATING SYSTEMS BY INSTALLED BASE AT END OF 2012
1 Android . . . . . . .  about 710 million smartphones in use and 53% of global installed base
2 iOS . . . . . . . . . . about 260 million smartphones in use and 19% of global installed base
3 Symbian  . . . . . . about 190 million smartphones in use and 14% of global installed base
4 Blackberry . . . . . 104 million smartphones in use and 8% of global installed base
5 bada  . . . . . . . . . about 30 million smartphones in use and above 2% of global installed base
6 Windows Phone . about 20 million smartphones in use and under 2% of global installed base
Total smartphones in use at end of 2012 about 1.3 Billion across all platforms globally
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Estimates December 21, 2012
RIM/Blackberry data final, other 5 (Android, iOS, Symbian, bada, Windows Phone) subject to final Q4 data
This data may be freely shared

And for Q4, RIM and HTC numbers suggest that HTC has fallen to about 8th and RIM to about 9th, both with about 3% market share. Last quarter we saw Motorola fall out of the Top 10 and this Q4 we may see Nokia follow, it is chased by Coolpad of China ie Yulong. I will keep us posted as the numbers come in. For those playing at home, I am modelling about 248 million smartphones sold in Q4 and 720M for the full year. There is some number out already suggesting the full year 2012 smartphone sales were 780M so we may be having a big Christmas season for smartphones, but lets not get ahead of ourselves. We'll know in late January and early February for sure.

And all who need more info about the handset market, remember my TomiAhonen Phone Book 2012 with all the stats and facts you could ever hope for in one ebook.

Comments

[Lasko]

Don't write off before BB10 has been released.

[Almonas]

I think Nexus4 won't help LG in any way.
The production quantities are way too low to have any significant impact.
And I am not sure what it really does to their image.

[cycnus]

@Lasko,

About RIM,
1. If microsoft can't fight android/iOS ecosystem, what can RIM do differently?
2. If you're gonna say DalvikVM, why would user buy a 'replica' of Android, instead the real deal?
3. If you're gonna say security, how many people really want that?
.. a couple day back, when RIM announce their financial statement, RIM say they gonna offer 2
.. flavour of connectivity. Secure & Unsecured. In the future, BBM, push e-mail could also
.. work on regular GPRS/3G/4G/Wifi (unsecured).... WHY??? Because RIM need to stay
.. competitive, or maybe the user doesn't really need that kind (BIS) of security?

Another reason why I think RIM is doomed.
BB10 would be expensive. It gonna compete with top end android and iphone.
Current RIM user that RIM proud of is not buying RIM top of the line. They bought the cheap BB. Tomi also wrote this... in Tomi's word, I pharaphrase, "they keep the old BB (or buy the cheap one), and upgrade the other phone into the (best) anroid/iOS device."

[Winter]

@Clarisonic Mia
"If we are calling smartphones 'computers' then by all means all types of videogame consoles should earn the moniker 'computers' aswell."

Computer is a functional description. In general, to be called a computer, two conditions must be must be fulfilled: One, it can be used to browse the web, do email correspondence, and fulfill most of your computing needs. Second, new functionality can be added by installing software. In practice, these uses should be widespread.

There are certainly gaming platforms that are used this way. But I would be surprised if they would make a dent in the overall statistics.

[Winter]

A nice quote from the Register. Lumia's are predominantly bought by people over 35 yoa. In other words, Lumia's are bought by people who were not current on Smartphones.

Duped is the word that come to my mind.

iPhone tops US market, but trounced by Android in world+dog
UK smartphoners prefer Android, but not as much as their EU brethren
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/21/iphone_and_android_global_stats/

On the sidelines of the iPhone-Android battle, the UK is seeing a bit of a rise in Windows phones – but it's rather feeble. "Nokia is managing to claw back some of its share in Great Britain through keenly priced Lumia 800 and 610 prepay deals," Sunnebo says.

Those phones, however, aren't doing well in the crucial young 'n' hip market.

"Nokia continues to find it tough to attract younger consumers in Great Britain," Sunnebo says. "Over the past six months, just 28 per cent of Nokia Lumia 800 sales have come from under 35's, compared with 42 per cent of all smartphone sales."

[Anonymous]

@cycnus

RIM hopes to regain ground in the enterprise where people do not simply get to choose something they like, but get forced something upon them selected by the IT department. Which often have very different selection criteria.

I know of enterprises which currently allow either a blackberry or a crippled iphone.
And given the choice between a crippled iphone or a "good enough" blackberry, I am not sure which one I would choose.

[newbie reader]

RIM is ok,
but their serious problem is that they "have only one shot".

To make BB10 a success is relatively easy, /as I see it/ but what if something goes wrong? Even Apple had antennagate with ip4, scuffgate and maps with ip5.

RIM knows it, and their hand is trembling. They postpone and postpone the release, to make it sure shot, at expense of eroding theit user base...

This is their major problem, only one shot. Yes, easy shot, but a lot of pressure. Miss it once, and fall off the Tomi's Cliff is unevitable.

PS.
This is an addition to my forecasts for other companies here:
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/11/preliminary-top-10-smartphone-makers-in-q3-samsung-on-top-nokia-tumbles-to-10th.html#comment-6a00e0097e337c8833017c334decbf970b
(there are two posts in that thread)

where I bet Lenovo to take #4 and LG to take #5

And endangered species next year are Nokia, HTC and RIM, yes, in that order.

Besides Coolpad, there are Moto, Sharp, and also Panasonic, and likes of Asus, Acer as potential or dormant risers.

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