Final 2013 Smartphone Market Share Numbers - Full year and Quarterly Q4 data by Top 10 brands, plus OS shares, plus installed base

Ah, we finally have all required data and can do the full analysis of Q4 of 2013 and that means we can also do the full year 2013. I know the yearly numbers are of more interest in the longer term so lets start with those here on top, then do the Quartelry numbers below

2013 FULL YEAR SMARTPHONE SALES STATISTICS

Rank . Brand . . . . 2013 units . . Share . . 2012 units . . Share . . 2011 units . . Share

1 (1)  . Samsung  . 311.4 M . . . .31.5% . . 215.0 M . . . 30.8% . . . 90.9 M . . . 18.7% 
2 (2)  . Apple  . . . . 153.4 M . . . .15.5% . . 135.8 M . . . 19.5% . . . 93.1 M . . . 19.1%
3 (5)  . Huawei  . . . . 52.0 M . . . . 5.3% . . 32.0 M . . . . 4.6% . . . 20.0 M . . . . 4.1%
4 (9)  . LG  . . . . . . . 47.6M . . . . .4.8% . . 26.5 M . . . . 3.8% . . . 23.3 M . . . . 4.8%
5 (10) . Lenovo *. . . 46.2 M . . . . 4.7% . . 24.9 M . . . . 3.6% . . . - - - . . . . . . . - - 
6 (8) . . ZTE . . . . . .  40.0 M . . . . 4.0% . . 30.0 M . . . . 4.3%  . . 12.0 M . . . . 2.5%
7 (6)  . Sony . . . . . . 38.4 M . . . . 3.9% . . 31.9 M . . . . 4.6% . .  26.8 M . . .   5.5%
8 (-) . . Coolpad . . . 35.3 M . . . . 3.6% . . - - - - . . . . . . - - . . . . - - - - . . .  . . . - - 
9 (3)  . Nokia . . . . .  30.5 M . . . . 3.1% . . 35.0 M . . . . 5.0%  . . 77.3 M . . . 15.9%
10 (7) . HTC  . . . . . . 26.6 M . . . . 2.7% . . 31.5 M . . . . 4.5% . . 44.6 M . . .   9.2%
Other . . . . . . . . . . 182.9 M . . . 18.5%
TOTAL . . . . . . . . . 990.0 M . . . . . . . . . . 697.7 M  . . . . . . . . . 486.0 M
 * Note: Lenovo has purchased the Motorola business from Google. When Motorola smartphone sales are added to Lenovo, the total number is about 60 million in 2013 and 6% market share which makes Lenovo instantly the 3rd largest smartphone maker when the Motorola sale has been completed
Source: TomiAhonen Almanac 2014
This data may be freely used and repeated

So we ended up just short of 1 Billion new sales. The year 2013 falled just 10 million units of smartphones ie 1% short of that 1 Billion new smartphone sales level we expected to see in 2013. Still the industry grew 42% from 2012 - a massive growth rate. 2013 was the year when we passed the half-point in the transition from dumbphones to smartphones, so now officially the dumbphone is an endangered species. Expect the last dumbphone to be made around year 2020.

In the market, Samsung's dramatic growth now stalled and Samsung's growth was anemic from 30.8% to 31.5%, less than one point of market share growth from 2012. Apple fared far worse seeing its first-ever market share decline from 2012, market share falling four full points from 19.5% to 15.5%. Obviously as the industry still was in hypergrowth, both Samsung and Apple saw actual unit sales growing still strongly. 

In the 'dwarfs' category, Huawei, LG and Lenovo all grew very strongly from 2012 to 2013, picking up market share and growing very stronly in unit sales. ZTE did less well as did Sony. HTC saw its market share decline while still managing to grow. Nokia actually saw real unit sales fall as well as its dramatic market share collapse continuning for the third year in a row. Coolpad ie Yulong of China kicked Blackberry out of the Top 10.

 

2013 FULL YEAR OPERATING SYSTEM MARKET SHARES

Rank . . OS . . . . . . . . .  2013 units . . share . . .2012 units . . share . . 2011 units . . share
1 (1) . .  Android  . . . . . . 767.3 M  . . . 78% . . . 452 M . . . . . 65% . . . 208 M . . . . . 43%
2 (2) . .  iOS . . . . . . . . . 153.4 M . . . . 16% . . . 136 M . . . . . 20% . . . . 93 M . . . . . 19%
3 (6) . .  Windows Phone . 33.3 M . . . . 3% . . . .16 M . . . . . . 2% . . . .  5 M  . . . . . . 1%
4 (3) . .  Blackberry . . . . . 23.0 M . . . . 2% . . . 33 M  . . . . . .5% . . . . 52 M . . . . . 11%
Others  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3 M . . . . 1%
TOTAL  . . . . . . . . . . . . . 990.0 M . . . . . . . . . . . 695 M  . . . . . . .. . . .  486 M
Source: TomiAhonen Almanac 2014
This data may be freely used and repeated

In the operating system wars Android is locking its hold on the future growing market share from 65% in 2012 to a massve 78%. Apple's iOS obviously lost market share now for the first time ever. Microsoft's Windows Phone finally took ;third ecosystem; honors in new sales (but nowhere near by installed base, see below). Note that Windows Phone's puny 3% is the tiniest market share for a 'third ecosystem' we've ever witnessed in this industry. So its a pyrrhic victory but yes they can claim ;third ecosystem' title if they want. Thats because Blackberry conveniently fell on its own sword also continuing its crash. Symbian and bada disappeared.


INSTALLED BASE OF SMARTPHONES BY OPERATING SYSTEM AS OF 31 DECEMBER 2013

Rank . OS Platform . . . . Units . . . Market share  Was 2012  . Main Manufacturers of current base
1 . . . . Android . . . . . . 1,089 M . . . 66 % . . . . . . ( 57 %) . . . . . . Samsung, Huawei, Sony, ZTE, LG, Lenovo, SonyEricsson, Coolpad 
2 . . . . iOS  . . . . . . . . . 336 M . . . 21 % . . . . . . ( 22 %) . . . . . . Apple
3 . . . . Symbian . . . . . .   81 M . . .  5 % . . . . . . ( 15 %) . . . . . . Nokia, Sharp, Panasonic, Fujitsu
4 . . . . Blackberry  . . . . .  59 M . . . 4 % . . . . . . (   8 %) . . . . . . RIM
5 . . . . Windows Phone . . 46 M . . . 3 % . . . . . . (   2 %) . . . . . . Nokia, Samsung, HTC, Huawei
Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 M . . .  2 %
TOTAL Installed Base . 1,644 M smartphones in use at end of Q4, 2013
Source: TomiAhonen Almanac 2014
This data may be freely used and repeated

If you need last year's data for full year 2012 market shares, it is here.

In the Installed Base of smartphones there are now 1.6 Billion smartphones in use worldwide. Two thirds of those are Androids. One in five is an iPhone. But the third most used smartphone OS still today is Symbian, fourth biggest by installed base is Blackberry and in the metric that matters Windows Phone is still two rankings below its intended 'third ecosystem' ranking. I would point out that 2013 was the first year when more of the new sales of smartphones went to replacement sales of existing smartphones than new sales for first-time smartphone owners.

Next lets do Q4 results:

BIGGEST SMARTPHONE MANUFACTURERS BY UNIT SALES IN Q4 2013

Rank . . Manufacturer . Units . . . Market Share . Was Q3 2013 . . OS systems supported (coming)[ending]
1 (1) . . Samsung . . . .  84.1 M . . 29.3% . . . . . . . ( 33.1% ) . . . . . . Android, bada, Windows (Tizen)
2 (2) . . Apple  . . . . . . . 51.0 M . . 17.8% . . . . . . . ( 13.3% ) . . . . . . iOS
3 (3) . . Huawei  . . . . . . 17.5 M . . . 6.1% . . . . . . . (   5.3% ) . . . . . . Android (Tizen)
4 (4) . . Lenovo  . . . . . . 13.6 M . . . 4.7% . . . . . . . (   4.8% ) . . . . . . Android (Tizen)
5 (5) . . LG  . . . . . . . .  . 13.2 M . . . 4.6% . . . . . . . (   4.7% ) . . . . . . Android
6 (6) . . ZTE  . . . . . . . . . 11.0 M . . . 3.8% . . . . . . . (   4.5% ) . . . . . . Android, Windows (Firefox)
7 (7) . . Sony . . . . . . . .  10.7 M . . . 3.7% . . . . . . . (   4.0% ) . . . . . . Android
8 (8) . . Coolpad/Yulong . 10.7 M . . . 3.7% . . . . . . . (   3.6% ) . . . . . . Android
9 (9) . . Nokia . . . . . . . . .  8.2 M . . . 2.9% . . . . . . . (   3.5% ) . . . . . . Windows, [Symbian] (Android?)
10 (10) . HTC . . . . . . . . .  7.4 M . . . 2.6% . . . . . . . (   2.5% ) . . . . . . Android, Windows
Others . . . . . . . . . . . .  59.8 M
TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . .  287.3 M
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 13 Feb 2014, based on manufacturer and industry data
This table may be freely shared


Samsung continued as by far the biggest smartphone maker in Q4. Its sales growth has now stalled, however.Unit sales were flat from Q3 while its market share was down. This Christmas Quarter is always Apple's best quarter so we could expect a slight dip in Samsung's market share but not as big as it was, especially as the iPhone growth from Q3 was far less than expected. So Samsung was losing considerably to the Chinese rivals in particular Huawei and Coolpad/Yulong. In other big news Samsung announced a delay again in Tizen to an unspecificed later launch this year. Samsung was making strong profits in its handset unit but the profits were down considerably from Q3 - out of a one-time cost of handing celebration bonuses for its employees. So please don't think Samsung's handset business is suddenly struggling.

Apple has the annual cyclical sales pattern where the market share peak is in Q4 and the bottom is in Q2, so this Christmas-quarter was vital for Apple's year 2014 total market performance, as it is now going to be down hill. The modest growth for its top quarter gaining only 18% now when a year earlier Apple too 22% in Q4 of 2012, suggests that Apple's market share decline will continue into 2014. We had known about the iPhone annual global market share being in decline on this blog for a while now as I've chronicled it here (first of any blog or news site) as the 'peak iPhone' phenomenon. Rumors are quite strong of a revision of the top iPhone model or models and larger-screen iPhones are in the offing (see my upcoming blog about screen sizes..). Apple of course produced the biggest profits once again in the handset industry, and by a wide margin too

Huawei was safely in third place grabbing 6% market share. This bodes well going into Q1 of 2014 which is the Chinese gift-giving season and Huawei may well hold onto very solid sales into the current quarter as well.

The next five brands had a pretty ho-hum quarter except for ZTE which saw some alarming erosion in its market share. Lenovo, LG, Sony and Yulog.Coolpad had pretty well similar performance in Q4 as in Q3.

As Lenovo announced the purchase of the Motorola handset business from Google, readers may be interested in how big a boost will that be. The Motorola smartphone business is in the range of 12 million units annually so when that is added to Lenovo's smartphone sales numbers, Lenovo leapfrogs the other dwarf-rivals into clear 3rd place ranking and a 6% market share. Note that Lenovo's handset business is profitable but the Motorola/Google handset business generated a loss, so Lenovo is likely to make several corrective actions to try to bring that unit back into profits and that may result in further decline in unit sales at Motorola but still we should be considering the Lenovorola business as the third largest smartphone maker right now and holding a 6% market share.

In the loser category Nokia had a sudden actual unit decline in smartphone sales in what is usually Nokia's strongest quarrter with Christmas sales. Nokia obviously was once again reporting a big loss in its smartphone unit. HTC meanwhile is now chased by Chinese Xiaomi who may soon kick HTC out of the Top 10. For those who want to know how was it possible for Nokia which utterly dominated the smartphone global race as recently as 3 years ago, to then fall so fast - this was in fact a world record collapse not just in handsets but of any globally contested industry ever recorded - here is the full story of how Nokia was destroyed (from the inside, by a madman CEO who was the worst CEO of all time. And we found out, he was guided by an outrageous bonus clause in his CEO contract). And for those who are curious about how can Microsoft guide the Nokia unit perhaps to different fortunes my analysis of those prospects is here. 



BIGGEST SMARTPHONE OPERATING SYSTEMS BY UNIT SALES IN Q4 2013

Rank . OS Platform . . . . Units . . . . Market share . Was Q3 2013 . . Manufacturers in Top 10
1 (1) . . Android . . . . . . . 220.2 M . .  77.4 % . . . . . ( 80.3 %) . . . . . Samsung, LG Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, Sony, Yulong/Coolpad, HTC
2 (2) . . iOS  . . . . . . . . . . 51.0 M . .  17.9 % . . . . . ( 13.3 %)  . . . . . Apple
3 (3) . . Windows Phone . . 8.6 M . . .  2.9 % . . . . . (  3.6 %) . . . . . . Samsung, Nokia
4 (4) . . Blackberry . . . . . . 4.3 M . . .  1.5 % . . . . . (  2.3 %) . . . . . . (None)
others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.5 M . . .  0.2 % . . . . . (   0.6 %)
TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . . .  287.3 M
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 14 Feb 2014, based on manufacturer and industry data
This table may be freely shared


That is the stuation on the quarterly results at Q4 of 2013. If you want to see Q3 results, they are here.  In the smartphone OS wars as we had the cyclically best Apple Quarter, it was to be expected that Android would be down about the same level as iOS would be up from Q3. But Android actually fell less and part of the Apple damage was now inflected upon Windows Phone and Blackberry instead. But again the wars are long since settle that it is Android and iOS that are the relevant platfroms, the rest are mere minnows of no real relevance (ie developers can safely ignore Windows Phone and Blackberry for mass market services. Blackberry will have its enterprise market but even that is eroding at alarming speed)

The time of Q1 o 2014 and the MWC conference in Barcelona was supposed to be a big launch party for Tizen OS. That has all been pushed back. Some of Tizen's carrier/operator partners have quit the Tizen project including Sprint and Telefonica. The launch operator/carrier NTT DoCoMo suddenly announced a postponement of the first Tizen smartphone launch to an unspecified future time. So did Samsung. The expectation is that some Tizen manufacturer will still show an early Tizen phone at MWC but that big splash is pretty well ended.

Also in the weird rumor parts of the OS wars, there is a persistent rumor that Nokia would launch its Normandy ie Project X ie Mview smartphone at the MWC or before the end of February, a smartphone that runs on Android. The weirdness of that 'strategy' mere weeks before the handset division is handed over to Microsoft's ownership is discussed on my blog here.

 

(more analysis still coming...)

 

Comments

[AndThisWillBeToo]

So Apple is selling only most expensive phone(s) in the market and last year sold HALF the amount of phones compared to #1, which reportedly had biggest sales in low-end.
Must be a pain to lose the market like that.

[Satya Nutela]

I believe BB10 user only around 3 million.

[cornelius]

there is a mistake in the header of the first table:
Rank . Brand . . . . 2013 units . . Share . . 2012 units . . Share . . 2012 units . . Share

The last year (to the right) should be 2011?

[AndThisWillBeToo]

OH MY GOD!
Samsung QoQ unit sales were FLAT!
Tomi report Q3 was 84.1M - same as now in Q4.
Samsung Samster the Sammie was not able to grow unit sales to Christmas quarter - AT ALL! And meanwhile the market grew 13% in one quarter!

How is that even possible? Due to iPhone? Impossible as only iSheeps buy iPhones and they do not buy Galaxy series. The best selling quarter in the year and Samsung can't improve sales. Weird. Totally weird.

[AndThisWillBeToo]

Nokia closed Symbian production lines at end of June 2013. Could you already accept there are no Symbian phones in Q4 numbers?

[AndThisWillBeToo]

@leebase
Apple increased sales by 18M units 2012->2013, 135.8M -> 153.4M. Pay attention.

[Paul]

Well to be fair to @leebase, he took the column (mis)labeled 2012 units and subtracted it from 2013 to get 60M.

[AndThisWillBeToo]

That's why I told him to pay attention. ;)
I assume Tomi fixes some labels and adds Q4 OS shares when he gets back.

[RottenApple]

@Leebase:

Bravo!
You are quite skilled at spinning the numbers in a way that suits your view of things.

Try to do some projections into the future with these numbers - that's where the potential dangers for Apple lie.

[Alex Kerr]

Many thanks Tomi.

I would love to know total installed base of featurephones, and total featurephone sales for 2013 please.

Much appreciated!

[John Fischer]

Rank . . Manufacturer . Units . . . Market Share . Was Q3 2013 . . OS systems supported

1 (1) . . Samsung . . . . 84.1 M . . 29.3% . . . . . . . ( 33.1% ) . . . . . . Android

Wow, Samsung decline documented in this blog, from Q3 to Q4 almost 4 % decline! If it would be apple it would be declared the biggest looser ever.

But apple grew 4,5% ... Umm? Why didn't people kept buying Samsung? Ahh , yes, seasonal... Always that time in the year that people prefers iphones and coincidentally the high end samsung phone didn't hit the sales targets...

What could be the excuse, big bonuses for their salesman.? Like the absurd excuse for the 18 % in yearly net... They most likely hid there part of the decline as they don't really show reliable numbers.. Who knows..

My Question for Tomi would be...

How much of Android market share really matters, kit kat? Ice cream and gingerbread account for almost 40% so, why not measure the relevant one to the other OS? Eliminated irrelevant data... Let's see the numbers.

[Sander van der Wal]

What on Earth is Tizen doing in the tables? Its market share is so small as not to show up in the list op relevant OS'es, but it is adding to Samsungs, Huawei's and Lenevo's profits? Bada and in particular Symbian have a right to be listed as formerly relevant OS's, but Tizen is vapourware.

[Winter]

Nice numbers. Let's compare the 4Q numbers (M):
4Q Android iPhone WP All
13 220.2 51.0 8.6 287.3
12 147.3 47.8 5.8 217.2
11 76.0 37.0 2.0 155.0
10 30.1 16.2 1.7 99.4

The year over year growth of Android 12-13 is 73M (49%), that of iPhone 3.2M (7%), that of WP 2.8M (48%). WP can barely "keep up with" the growth of the market (in percentages). However, the whole growth achieved by WP from 4Q12 to 4Q13 is a single day of Android sales.

But the growth in units of iPhone over that time is barely bigger than that of WP.

This really looks like Apple is hitting market saturation.

[notzed]

Tomi, why not use the "pre" tag for the tables? Thats why it exists. They're pretty hard to read even with trying to align everything up with those dots.

[RottenApple]

@Leebase:

"The average profit to make and sell a PC is $23. Apple makes on average about $260 per Mac."

Of course this is comparing apples to oranges because the Mac profit contains the part made by the OS - for regular Windows PCs this piece of the cake goes to Microsoft.

I'd like to see the profit margins of companies that actually build PCs according to their customers' demands. All this ultra-cheap machines are ultimately just crap - barely usable to surf the internet, but that's it. That part of the market will go away soon anyway because that's what gets replaced by tablets and chromebooks.

Maybe once that happens the profitability returns - if the market adjusts to customers who need quality hardware that actually can do some stuff.

[foo]

Tomi,

What do you think about this news?

The latest Brandirectory survey on global brands is out and it’s got some grim news for Microsoft: The value of the handset brand it bought has continued plunging. Back in 2008, Nokia was one of the top 10 brands in the world. In 2014, Nokia no longer even makes the top 500 list of leading brands.

http://bgr.com/2014/02/19/nokia-2014-brand-value/

[RottenApple]

@Leebase:

"Having a line of premium computers and selling plenty of them are not the same thing."

Correct. But as I said, I'm fairly sure that the largest part of this segment gets served by specialty builders, i.e. since these outfits operate in smaller quantities, their product never shows up on any chart. Of course this will give the faulty impression that aside from Apple nobody is making money here.

But this is the market segment that actually competes with Apple.

[Mark W]

Thanks for the numbers Tomi.

Very interesting reading regarding Tomi's forecasting accuracy in:

http://dominiescommunicate.wordpress.com/2014/02/22/final-verdict-on-tomi-ahonen-forecast-accuracy-year-2013/

Despite huge spreads in his forecasts quite a few are misses. Not to dismiss Tomi's skills, just that calling himself the most accurate forecaster and then missing most of them...

[RottenApple]

Ugh...

Forget that site. The guy behind it is clealy an anti-Tomi crusader. And it completely misses the mark of 'correctness'. It's a forecast, not clairvoyance.

Of course, seen like that, quite a bit of predictions are misses. That's inevitable if you consider things black and white. You got to see stuff in context, i.e. how large is the margin of error compared to other forecasters.

As an example, Tomi was off by ca. 100% when forecasting the performance of Nokia after burning the platforms. In reality Nokia fared far worse than predicted. Sounds like a bad forecast, eh? By itself certainly - you must have a look at competing forecasts, though, and most of those were off by more than twice as much, if not a lot more.

[AndThisWillBeToo]

I thought that was about year 2013? Didn't Strategy Analytics already say 4% for Windows Phone at the time Tomi insisted it can never exceed 2%?