Communities Dominate Brands

The Comprehensive App Economics Blog 2014 - Yes Peak App is apt name - Sheer disaster industry with only one sector making money

Welcome to the Definitive App Economics Blog. All the stats and facts. So. Did you read the news recently? Smartphone and tablet app store downloads will jump 65% from last year and pass 102 Billion in 2014. Thats 60 apps downloaded per smartphone user ie 5 apps downloaded per smartphone per month on average. Over 3 million apps have been created already and 40,000 new apps are released every month. The apps ecosystem employs 2.1 million developers globally and will make 35 Billion dollars in revenues this year. Thats up 67% from last year. Apps already are bigger than the global music industry and this year the apps economy becomes larger than total cinema box office revenues worldwide. Smartphone users now spend over 2 hours on apps every day. So isn’t this an awesome eldorado of a business opportunity? No. While all that is true, the business of smartphone apps is a total disaster. 

There is some good news. Some companies do actually make money and even profits in this struggling industry. But lets be very clear. When total developer-revenues (after Apple or Google has taken its cut) are divided by total apps in circulation, we get an average earned revenue of 5,250 US dollars per app that exists. Thats pretty pathetic when the average app development costs are about 25,000 dollars. When we remove the ‘zombie’ apps (ones that have been abandoned by their developer and aren’t updated anymore) then for currently supported ‘modern’ apps the average revenue per live app is $17,500. That sounds pretty good doesn’t it as everyone can't be a winner. Or is it?

Yes it sounds good. If you were still under the illusion that the smartphone apps opportunity is like so-called ‘hits businesses’ like books, pop music, movies and videogames - where roughly 1 in 10 titles is a hit, and by deploying a portfolio of titles, producers can play the numbers and become profitable - then it sounds promising yes. Many think smartphone apps business is like that and we hear it from time to time from so-called experts who don’t understand the mobile industry. But the real experts on smartphone apps business know now what I said from the start. It is not like the other hits businesses. The success rate is nothing near 1 in 10. The smarphones apps business is more like a lottery. Only very rare winners emerge and they collect massive income. That distorts the average number.

 

Let me illustrate with simple example. If a rural village has 100 people each earning 100 dollars a month, their average earned is 100 dollars. Then lets say one villager wins the lottery and earned now 1 million dollars. the town income is 1,010,000. Divide that by 100 and the ‘average’ income by each of the town villagers is 10,100 dollars. In reality one earned 1,000,100 and the others still earn only 100 dollars. Median is still 100 dollars meaning the mid-point. You can see where some exceptionally affluent members of such a statistical group can massively distort the math. Average is a misleading number when analysing the smartphone and tablets apps industry. It is vastly over-rating the reality.

So lets use median. Median is that person at the mid-point, literally half of all developers earn more, and half earn less than him (or her). Here is the truth. The ‘median’ developer earns a whopping 400 dollars per year out of the smartphone app-generated revenues. That includes all sources including payments from the app store (after Apple or Google has taken its cut). That includes advertising revenues. And it includes in-app purchases. Yes. Median revenue earned by a smartphone or tablet app developer out of the app itself is 400 dollars. That means literally, that half of all app developers earn less than 400 dollars, half earn more than that. 400 dollars does not even cover the cost of the development tools and software that the app developer needs. Thats before considering programming time used.

 

3.8% of smartphone app developers are able to turn some profit. Yes over 96% of smartphone app developers lose money on the project. Only 1.3% of developers have a hit product. This is essentially 10 times worse than normal hits businesses. Your chances of success are nearly as bad as 1 in 100. You are better off learning to rap or writing a book.

 

I said when smartphone apps became the latest iHysteria six years ago that this was mostly hype and most app developers won’t be able to make money. I was right. I also said that there will be some hits that will be celebrated and they will in turn lure more sheep to the slaughter. And I was right. I have been writing occasional deep and detailed app store economics articles on this blog to try to help the industry. Last time when I did this a couple of years ago, I said games would make money. I was right. I also said then that gaming revenues would be increasingly made with virtual goods sales (now-called ‘in-app purchases’ by the industry). I was correct. And I warned that apps will not become a big advertising medium. And I was right again. I do know this industry and how it makes its money. So now its time to do the most comprehensive analysis of the 35 Billion dollar smartphone apps economy for 2014. What is the state of this industry.

And before you quarrel with me that what does Tomi know about this apps business, I wrote literally the world’s first book about apps and services for mobile (the world’s bestselling mobile industry book for several months in 2002). Then to follow that, I wrote literally the world’s first business book for the mobile data industry (worlds’s bestselling mobile industry book several months early in 2003). I am the most published author in mobile, 12 books and counting, and I am referenced by my peers in over 140 books they have written. This blog is the largest collection of free statistics on the mobile industry with numerous exclusive stats that no other analyst releases into the public domain. I do this blog totally free with no advertising and no registration and I don’t collect your data to spam you later. A decade after this blog started its still here, its not for sale. We’ve had 5 million visitors to this blog and over 40,000 comments have been left here. Its no wonder Forbes ranked me the most influential expert in the mobile industry.

 

APP ECONOMY BASE METRICS

So lets start with the big picture. This blog is analysis by my company. TomiAhonen Consulting, on smartphone apps data published into the public domain by the major analysts who report on smartphone and tablet apps data. Some of the sources include Distimo, ComScore, Vision Mobile, Statista, Mobile App Jungle, Knicket, Abi, Crispy Codes, Gartner, Strategy Analytics, Juniper, Digi Capital, Compuware etc. And of course TomiAhonen Consulting. This is how I see the size of the industry now, all data is for full year 2013 and includes both tablets and smartphones, globally:

APP ECONOMY BIG PICTURE 2013
Total apps . . . . . . . . . 3 million [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Total downloads . . . . 102 billion [Gartner]
Total smartphones . . .1.4 billion at mid-year [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Total developers . . . . 2.1 million [Vision Mobile]
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting on published industry data Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

All numbers keep growing. The snapshot is at end of December 2013 except for the smartphone number which is half-year so we can divide with it for full year data

ACTIVE APPS 2013
Total apps . . . . . . . . . 3 million [TomiAhonen Consulting]
’Zombie apps’ . . . . . . 70% [Adjust]
Maintained live apps . 900,000
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting on published industry data Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

There are a rapidly increasing proportion of all apps in app stores that are so-called ‘zombies’ ie they still exist but are not really alive. Their creators have abandoned them, they are no longer updated for newer operating system versions and no maintenance is done but they still lie around cluttering the crowded stores. I will be providing related analysis both of ‘total apps’ counting all including Zombies, and data based on ‘live’ apps only when Zombies are removed. That is the currently relevant number.

APP DOWNLOADS 2013
Total downloads . . . . 102 billion [Gartner]
Total apps . . . . . . . . . 3 million [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Total smartphones . . .1.4 billion at mid-year [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Downloads per app . . 34,000
’Zombie apps’ . . . . . . 70% [Adjust]
Maintained live apps . 900,000
Downloads/live app . . 113,300
Downl/smartphone . .  73
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting on published industry data Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

The average smartphone owner downloaded 73 apps in 2013. The average app had 34,000 downloads if all apps are counted but when counting only live apps after zombies are removed, the live apps got 113,300 downloads on average. Remember, these averages are far above the median levels because of well, Angry Birds, Facebook and Skype...

SMARTPHONE APPS ECONOMICS

 

So now lets talk about the money! Revenues. What kind of money is in the industry and who gets it and how. So now lets explore those numbers...

SMARTPHONE APP REVENUES 2013
Total revenues . . . . . . 21.0 billion dollars [Strategy Analytics]
In-app Advertising . . . . 3.5 billion dollars [Juniper]
App store income . . . . 17.5 billion dollars [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Commission 30% . . . . . 5.3 billion dollars paid to Apple, Google etc [Apple, Google]
Paid out to developers . 12.3 billion dollars
Developer revenue . . .  15.8 billion dollars
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting on published industry data Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

Revenues have grown far more gradually than most promised. The advertising revenue growth has not kept up with total app growth numbers. Apple and Google and other app store owners take their cut of course. Developers got to keep 15.8 billion dollars out of the app store economic opportunity in 2013.

SMARTPHONE APP REVENUE RATIOS 2013
Developer revenue . . 15.8 billion dollars [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Total apps . . . . . . . . . 3 million [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Total downloads . . . . 102 billion [Gartner]
Total smartphones . . .1.4 billion at mid-year [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Total developers . . . . 2.1 million [Vision Mobile]
Dev rev per app . . . . . 5,250 dollars
Dev rev per live app . . 17,500 dollars
Dev rev per downl . . . 15 cents
Dev rev per smartph . . 11.25 dollars
Dev rev per dev . . . . . . 7,500 dollars

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting on published industry data Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

So when we remove the iTax and gTax we get revenue paid to developers. That revenue is 5,250 dollars per all apps including zombies. In terms of live apps, the developer revenues are 17,500 dollars in 2013. When we divide total developer revenues by total downloads, the average download is worth 15 cents. If we allocate the revenues by number of smartphones in use, each smartphone in use generates 11.25 dollars of developer revenues. And each developer’s cut out of the developer revenue pie on average is 7,500 dollars. As the median developer only gets 400 dollars, obviously there is a fortune then available for the few uber-rich.

SMARTPHONE USERS AND APPS

So then lets look at the smartphone user and what they do with the apps. Even as they download tons, they don’t really use all that many.

SMARTPHONE USER APP STATS 2013
Total downloads . . . . 102 billion [Gartner]
Total smartphones . . .1.4 billion at mid-year [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Downl/smartphone . .  73
Free as % of downl..... 80% [Statista]
Deleted after 1 use . . . 85% [Compuware]
Apps left to be used . . 11
Pre-installed apps . . . . 20 
Of those in use . . . . . . 10
Total apps used . . . . . . 21
Apps uses daily . . . . . . 10 [Flurry]
Daily uses per app used 0.5
Monthly use ave app . . 14 times
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting on published industry data Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

So yes, we use Facebook many times per day. But 85% of downloaded apps are deleted after one use. Of the 11 apps that remain, and the apps on our phone that we actually use, the average app gets less than one use per day. 0.5 uses per day. Or the average app that didn’t get deleted, is used only 14 times per month. This is the average across the total smartphone user base. Serious gamers can easily use an app (game) 50 times per day...

We just heard that most smartphone owners do not download even one app monthly. Why is that if the download numbers are so big and essentially all smartphone users do download apps. Its that we binge-download apps when the smartphone is brand new. We love the new phone, we want our fave apps onto it what we had before (or if its the first smartphone, what we may have been wanting to get) and thats when we also discover some other interesting apps. That happens in the first month of ownership. Then most smartphone users stop and the phone stays like that most of the way. There may be an occasional need to download something but we don’t go back to the store just to shop. We do that only when the smartphone is new. The next time we do that, is when we get our next smartphone.

This pattern will also get a level of ‘learning’ where at the first time we do a lot of experimentation of new especially free apps. Then after a couple of newer phones, we don’t bother to download all the bloatware we got previously when we know we didn’t use those apps that much to begin with. And we settle into our couple of fave apps that we’ll install to the next smartphone. Odds are that several of our favorites are pre-installed on that smartphone already.

SMARTPHONE DEVELOPER FINANCES

So then lets look at the smartphone app developer labor force. This part of the analysis is almost exclusively based on the excellent global app developer survey by Vision Mobile. I have sorted out some of the more cryptic numbers in their report, and then applied it across the total industry metrics as in the above. I have also re-integrated the part they cut out - those developers who are not trying to making money out of the downloaded app. That on the surface may seem counter-intuitive, why then make the apps but in reality there are many who are like this. Many corporate branded apps are utilities to let you use your smartphone to do something with their tech, from car apps to hotel key apps to accessories to our phones etc. So the app is not intended to be a ‘profit center’ but rather an enabler. The owner/company/brand makes its money on the main business and the app is only an accessory to get you connected. Similarly there are many ‘hobbyist’ developers who are in it for the fun or to get the experience coding, not to try to make money. Vision Mobile removed those developers and reported on stats only on the developers who try to make money. I have now re-integrated those developers back as this is a comphrehensive survey of the economy. Their numbers are needed in any case.

THE RICH IN APPS ECONOMY 2013
Total revenues . . . . . . 21.0 billion dollars
Apple & Google tax . .  5.3 billion dollars (25%)
Top 1.3% developers . . 27,300 developers
Top 1.3 earn . . . . . . . . . 11.8 billion dollars
Top 1.3 earn . . . . . . . . . 56% of all revenues
Top 1.3 earn . . . . . . . . . 75% of developer revenues
Average per dev . . . . . . 432,700 dollars
Left for rest of devs . . . . 3.9 billion dollars (19%)
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting analysis on Vision Mobile survey Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

MIDDLE CLASS IN APPS ECONOMY 2013
Revenues left . . . . . . . . 3.9 billion dollars
Next 2.5% developers .  52,500 developers
Next 2.5% earn . . . . . . . 2.1 billion dollars
Next 2.5% earn . . . . . . . 10% of all revenues
Next 2.5% earn . . . . . . . 14% of developer revenues
Average per dev . . . . . . 40,500 dollars
Left for rest of devs . . . . 1.8 billion dollars (9%)
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting analysis on Vision Mobile survey Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

LABORERS IN APPS ECONOMY 2013
Revenues left . . . . . . . . 1.8 billion dollars
Next 7% developers . . . 147,500 developers
Next 7% earn . . . . . . . .  1.4 billion dollars
Next 7% earn . . . . . . . .  7% of all revenues
Next 7% earn . . . . . . . .  9% of developer revenues
Average per dev . . . . . .  9,400 dollars
Left for rest of devs . . . . 400 million dollars (2%)
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting analysis on Vision Mobile survey Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

SLAVES IN APPS ECONOMY 2013
Revenues left . . . . . . . . 400 million dollars
Next 48% developers . . 1,029,000 developers
Next 48% earn . . . . . . .  1.4 billion dollars
Next 48% earn . . . . . . .  2% of all revenues
Next 48% earn . . . . . . .  3% of developer revenues
Average per dev . . . . . .  421 dollars
Left for rest of devs . . . . 0 million dollars (0%)
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting analysis on Vision Mobile survey Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

HUDDLED MASSES IN APPS ECONOMY 2013
Revenues left . . . . . . . . . .  0 million dollars
Bottom 39% developers . . 819,000 developers
Bottom 39% earn . . . . . . .  0 million dollars
Bottom 39% earn . . . . . . .  0% of all revenues
Bottom 39% earn . . . . . . .  0% of developer revenues
Average per dev . . . . . . . .  0 dollars
In above numbers:
Beggars failed to earn . . . . 400,000
Hobbyists don’t care . . . . . 250,000
Branded utility app devs . . 170,000
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting analysis on Vision Mobile survey Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

So the rich class is the 1%. They earn on average about half a million dollars from their app. There are about 27,000 app developers in that group (but remember average will be misleading metric. Median will be lower and again the hyper-millionaires will skew this with their high earning). Another coupla percent are able to survive on apps but aren’t visiting the car dealership. The vast majority, almost ‘the 99 percent’ or in reality 96% of developers do not recover the development costs of their app. The median revenue earned by developers is only 400 dollars per year.

And did you notice the iTax and gTax. Apple and Google combined slice up 25% of the total apps economy. (The reason its not 30% is advertising... developers can make some money bypassing the app store revenues). They are clearly the two biggest boys in this race. Its like in Las Vegas, the gamblers mostly lose, some win big, but the House Always Wins. This is like an unlicenced gambling operation run by the nice iFolks and gFolks for us, and poor saps run in with their wacky app ideas and 96% lose their shirts.. but the House Always Wins.

(NOTE added 3 Sept - Please note, Mark Wilcox who represents Vision Mobile, has posted a critical comment to this blog, where he argues that one should look at the picture of the apps developers from the perspective of those who actually attempt to make money rather than all app developers as a whole. He acknowledges that the theme of this blog is in line with their view but Mark says I present a picture more severe than it really is. I have of course responded to Mark in the comments as well. But his point is well made and please note, that if you go to Vision Mobile's survey data, you will get the info sliced the way he prefers. It was not my intention of this blog to focus only on a selected slice of about one quarter of all app developers but rather to provide a comprehensive global survey of the total apps economy, all apps, all platforms, all developers, all revenues, all profits and losses. Not just a slice of the developers.)

So yeah, the term ‘Peak Apps’ is quite apt. The hype and hysteria of smartphone and tablet apps is now starting to turn into a sour reality. The horrid state of most developers means that the level of app development is not sustainable. Now its not me anymore saying that, it is also what Vision Mobile said after they did their huge global developer survey and the math of developer income levels. It is also a reason why there are so many Zombie apps, the developers have just given up after they were demoralized that their app was not the next Angry Birds or Instagram or Uber.

There is definitely some use and need for apps. Most of that use is non-profitable apps, utilities and branded media apps etc. Facebook doesn’t need to make money on FB app downloads, they just want everybody to become guinea pigs onto their various weird behavior ‘studies’. Business and enterprise apps have their own niche which is far more healthy than the consumer apps space. And within consumer apps there is one area that can make money.. gaming.

So. Lets now separate the viable business part away from the junk and look at apps by type. And I will take one short view to this related topic

TABLETS ARE NOT MOBILE

So yeah, tablets. The smartphone app stores are used to sell apps to smartphones and tablets. When the iPad arrived I was among the first to point out, that a tablet is not ‘mobile’ in how we identify this industry (of cellular phones). Tablets are ultra-portable PCs. Many especially PC industry-based and US based analysts looked at tablets as ‘just being larger iPhones’ and thought a tablet is a mobile just like a smartphone. A little bit bigger smartphone. No, it looks like a larger smartphone but behaves quite differently. I was among the first to argue they were separate beasts and I used my standard test of ‘is it a mobile’ ie the ‘ringing in the pocket’ test. This same test is how we can see that a PDA is not the same device as a smartphone, neither is a Playstation Portable or an iPod Touch. They are pocketable digital gadgets but they are not ‘mobiles’. We do not carry them everywhere, we don’t sleep with them and take them to the toilet, like we do with our mobiles (smartphones, dumbphones). Ringing in the pocket test means it has to be small enough to fit into our pocket. A phablet fits in a pocket. a tablet doesn’t. And to ring there, ie to alert us anywhere, even while sitting in a speeding taxi, an iPod Touch with WiFi connection doesn’t connect continuously everywhere, but our mobile phones do.

Now increasingly that view is accepted in the tech industry and more and more experts and writers are teaching that beware, a tablet behaves differently from a smartphone. There is of course overlap but you should know how your device is used and optimize for it. The tablet is a different beast. For example Gary Schwartz in his latest book Fast Shopper Slow Store teaches us that tablets immobilize people. When we take out our tablet, we stop walking, we want to sit down, use both hands, sit at a Starbucks etc... Smartphones don’t make us stop. We can use our smartphones while we walk... So yeah. Tablets schmatlets.

Tablets are exciting for the PC industry which sees its traditional hardware sales in serious decline. The tablet came just in time to help rescue that industry. But in scale the tablet is a trivial bit of noise compared to the huge industry of mobile phones. And now we are seeing some of the first research about how the gadgets compare, out of where else Japan, the world’s leading nation in terms of mobile (all of Japan has already migrated to speeds of 3G or faster, Japan will launch 5G at the Tokyo Olympics). The just-released CIAJ consumer survey was the first to inquire about tablets as either first or second gadgets. About a third of Japanese smartphone owners carry a second device, and increasingly, they are now making a tablet that second device. But none in Japan consider the tablet the first device with the smartphone in second place. If you go out tonight, you’ll leave your tablet at home and only squeeze your mobile into some pocket of your evening outfit (or your purse). Tablets will sell more than laptops this year at about 250 million units. Smartphones growth this year alone exceeds that number! Yes, smartphones will add more than 250 million new sales this year increasing the gap between the two. Smartphones outsell tablets at roughly 5 to 1. Tablet sales will peak somewhere in the several hundred million range in some years from now. Smartphone sales will penetrate 2 billion units annually before this decade is done. This blog is about ‘mobile’ not about the PC industry. Tablets are ultra-portable PCs. I include them in the above numbers as they are included in the various stats, but now lets separate them from mobile apps and get serious.

TABLET REVENUES OUT OF APPS REVENUES
Total revenues . . . . . . . 21.0 billion dollars [Strategy Analytics]
Tablet revenue . . . . . . . 35% [Abi]
Tablet revenue . . . . . . . 5.5 billion dollars (out of developer revenues, after iTax & gTax)
Tablet apps all . . . . . . . 1.1 million [TomiAhonen Consulting]

Tablet apps live . . . . . . 315,000 [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Tablet app downloads .  35.7 billion [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Revenue smartphones .  10.2 billion dollars

Apps for smartphones .  1.9 million
Live apps smartphones . 585,000
Smartph app downl . . . . 66.3 billion [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting on published industry data Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

I am not going to analyze the above further, so those who are in the tablets or PC space, feel free to do a deeper analysis of the tablet apps industry. Now lets move to the far larger opportunity, smartphone apps:

APPS FOR SMARTPHONES WHEN TABLETS REMOVED

So now we get to the mobile opportunity. Tablets are good for education, for many magazine and media titles, and of course gaming etc. Mobiles are with us all the time so they are better for things we do while moving about, so for example payment related things, and alerts, and utility services like opening locks or say related to our identity, our ID cards and loyalty cards etc etc etc. And of course we will still also watch videos, play games, do our Twittering and Facebooking etc on our smartphones as well. So when the tablet apps business is removed, and we focus now only on smartphones, this is what it looks like:

SMARTPHONE APP SECTOR OUT OF APPS ECONOMY
Total apps revenues . . . . . . . 21.0 billion dollars [Strategy Analytics]
Smartphones only revenue . . 15.8 billion dollars
Revenue smartphones .  . . . . 10.2 billion dollars (developer revenue, after iTax & gTax)
Apps for smartphones . . . . . .  1.9 million
Live apps smartphones . . . . . . . 585,000 (after zombies removed)
Smartph app downl . . . . . . . 66.3 billion [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Total smartphones . . . . . . . .  1.4 billion at mid-year
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting on published industry data Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

So yeah, these are just repeating numbers we had before, collected into one chart. Now lets do some analysis

 

SMARTPHONE APP SECTOR METRICS 2013
Developer revenue . . .  10.2 billion dollars

Live apps smartphones . 585,000
Smartph app downl . . . . 66.3 billion [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Total smartphones . . . . . 1.4 billion at mid-year [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Downloads per live app . 113,300
Downloads per smartph . 28.8
Revenue per download . . 15 cents
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting on published industry data Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

Now lets split this up by enterprise/corporate smartphone sector and the consumer sector. Note the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) development at the workplace makes these stats somewhat distorted but should still be reasonably good for the split out so we can then focus on the larger consumer market.

SMARTPHONE ENTERPRISE APP METRICS 2013
Developer revenue . . .  .1.1 billion dollars [TomiAhonen Consulting]

Live apps smartphones . 47,000 [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Smartph app downl . . . . 5.2 billion [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Total enterpr smartph . . . 90 million at mid-year [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Downloads per live app . 113,300
Downloads per smartph . 35.9
Revenue per live app . . . 24,500 dollars
Revenue per download . . 22 cents
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting on published industry data Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

SMARTPHONE CONSUMER APP METRICS 2013
Developer revenue . . .  . 9.1 billion dollars

Live apps smartphones . 538,000
Smartph app downl . . . . 60.9 billion
Total consumer smartph . 1.3 billion at mid-year
Downloads per live app . 113,300
Downloads per smartph . 28.5
Revenue per live app . . . 16,900 dollars
Revenue per download . . 15 cents
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting on published industry data Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

Now we can turn to see how those gaming revenues do, and compare to the ‘rest of consumer apps’ and now the truth becomes blatantly obvious.

SMARTPHONE GAMING APP METRICS 2013
Developer revenue . . .  . 8.2 billion dollars [Vision Mobile]

Live apps smartphones . 135,000 [Vision Mobile]
Smartph app downl . . . . 26.5 billion [Digi Capital]
Total consumer smartph . 1.3 billion at mid-year [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Downloads per live app . 197,100
Downloads per smartph . 12.4
Revenue per live app . . . 60,900 dollars
Revenue per download . . 31 cents
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting on published industry data Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

SMARTPHONE NON-GAMING CONSUMER APP METRICS 2013
Developer revenue . . .  . 900 million dollars

Live apps smartphones . 404,000
Smartph app downl . . . . 34.5 billion
Total consumer smartph . 1.3 billion at mid-year [TomiAhonen Consulting]
Downloads per live app . 85,400
Downloads per smartph . 16.2
Revenue per live app . . .  2,300 dollars
Revenue per download . . 3 cents
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting on published industry data Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

This is the massacre. This is how smartphone makers fail. This is the endless pit of despair. Let me put this into a carnage table so we can compare gaming apps vs non-gaming consumer apps in 2013.
 
CARNAGE TABLE: SMARTPHONE CONSUMER APPS BY TYPE 2013
Item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Non-gaming apps . . . . . . . Gaming apps
Developer revenue . . .  . 900 million dollars . . . . . . 8.2 billion dollars

Live apps smartphones . 404,000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135,000
Smartph app downl . . . . 34.5 billion . . . . . . . . . . . . 26.5 billion
Downloads per live app . 51,900 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  119,800
Downloads per smartph . 16.2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12.4
Revenue per live app . . .  2,300 dollars . . . . . . . . . .  60,900
Revenue per download . . 3 cents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  31 cents
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting on published industry data Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

You can see the dramatic difference. Gaming is quite a healthy app category, with plenty of profit potential. In fact the 10 biggest revenue-earning apps in 2013 were all games said App Annie. Most of the millionaires in apps are from gaming. But look at the opposite end on that table, the despair if you don’t do games or enterprise apps. Then its hopeless. 75% of apps are in this category of misery. And remember now, these are still averages, the median is always worse for these... If the median for all app developers was 400 dollars and the difference between game developers and the rest is this stark, the median income for the non-gaming developers must be under 100 dollars but I don’t have enough data to be able to calculate that at this point.

SMARTPHONE APPS INDUSTRY PROFITS

So.. Now as the real interest is not download or users or even revenues, it is profits. How much profit is there, hidden in the overall apps desolation? We do have profits. The uber-rich do make profits and I used some industry metrics of development costs and updating costs and number of developers per app created and arrived at this kind of split:

PROFITS EARNED IN SMARTPHONE APPS 2013
Apple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8 billion dollars (46%)

Google . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 billion dollars (23%)
Rich 1.3% developers . . . 1.9 billion dollars (31%)
Total profit earned . . . . . . 6.1 billion dollars
NOTE: losses by rest of industry greater than 6.1 billion so overall 21 billion dollar apps ecosystem in 2013 was unprofitable
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting on published industry data Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

So there you have it. Last year the biggest profit earned in smartphone apps space was Apple with a nice 2.8 billion dollars. Google came in second with 1.4 billion and the rich app developers split another 1.9 billion dollars in profits amongst themselves.

How do apps earn their money? It is now almost totally by the in-app purchases as I promised way back when. I called it sale of virtual goods. This is how the revenues split by type of revenue earned (across all apps, including tablets)

REVENUE SPLIT BY TYPE IN APPS ECONOMY 2013
Total revenues . . . . . . 21.0 billion dollars [Strategy Analytics]
App store income . . . . 17.5 billion dollars
Commission 30% . . . . . 5.3 billion dollars paid to Apple, Google etc
Paid out to developers . 12.3 billion dollars
In-app purchases . . . . . . 9.8 billion dollars (62% of developer revenue) [Distimo]
App purchase fees . . . . . 2.5 billion dollars (16% of developer revenue) [Distimo]
In-app Advertising . . . .  3.5 billion dollars (22% of developer revenue) [Juniper]
Developer revenue . . .  15.8 billion dollars
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting on published industry data Aug 2014
This table may be freely shared

Thats what the app store economics look like. Do you think this is an opportunity? For games, yes. But that was true long before there was an iPhone or the App Store. I’ve been using games as my primary example of what part of the apps vs web argument works best for mobile, for more than a decade now. Gaming apps are easily a ‘hits business’ and roughly speaking one in ten gaming apps is a hit. And they can be huge hits, they can easily sustain that part of the apps economy where other games will of course fail. Its like music or movies or books or, indeed videogaming. No surprise.

The rest of apps? There is some health in enterprise/corporate apps but thats a long slug and the sales cycle is long, so get some investors with deep pockets. But in the consumer space, after a handful of social networking services, beyond the gaming side, there is a barren desert. No revenues, no profits, no water, just death.

PLATFORMS FOR SMARTPHONE APPS

So then the platforms. Where should you develop? Good question. Answer is Android. Yes, iPhone too if you develop for the Industrialized World but not for the Emerging World. If you develop for the Emerging World then its Android and Java. Windows Phone is dead, Symbian is dead, bada is dead, Blackberry only lives in the enterprise. Here are the stats:

SMARTPHONE INSTALLED BASE SUMMER 2014:
Rank . . OS Platform . . . . Units . . . Market share

1 . . . . . Android . . . . . . . . 1,336 M . . . 72 %

2 . . . . . iOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 M . . . 19 %

5 . . . . . Windows Phone . . . . 53 M . . . 3 %

4 . . . . . Blackberry . . . . . . . . 44 M . . . 2 %

3 . . . . . Symbian . . . . . . . . . . 41 M . . .  2 %

Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 M . . .  1 %

TOTAL Installed Base . .  1,833 M smartphones in use at end of Q2, 2014

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 15 August 2014, based on manufacturer and industry data

This table may be freely shared

WHERE IS THE MONEY?

Mobile is the fastest-growing giant industry on the planet. Our industry hits 1.7 Trillion dollars in annual revenues this year according to Chetan Sharma and he says the golden era of mobile is only dawning now (similar to what I’ve been saying). Let me just draw your attention to two lucrative technologies, neither of which is as exciting as smartphone apps.

SMS text messaging is not dead. Its not dying. 6 Billion people on the planet use SMS text messaging today, even as the heavy users have shifted most of their messaging traffic to OTT messaging platforms like Whatsapp. Even they are not abandoning SMS. I am not suggesting you try to do person-to-person messaging. I mean using premium SMS. Premium SMS was worth 55 Billion dollars last year according to Juniper (more than twice the total revenues of smartphone apps) and is used in everything from news headlines to jokes to coupons to television voting to alerts to reminders to weblinks to security confimations. 55 Billion dollars in the ‘business’ side of SMS. Who knew? (My readers knew..). And yes, premium SMS is still growing! 6 Billion active users of SMS is of course nearly 4 times more than all smartphones in use. You can use SMS also for all sorts of activation and engagement and reminder uses with apps.

Beyond that is what I often call the super-messaging for media. MMS. What you may think of as the stupid picture-messaging feature that you of course do not use. Except that MMS is far larger than all apps revenues.. yeah. That MMS. The ‘failed’ MMS that generated 31 Billion dollars in 2011 year according to Portio and is still growing. Far more than half of MMS is now media content not pictures by consumers. Media content like what? News. Video clips of TV shows. Ads. Movie trailers. Jokes. Offers. Tickets. So yeah. I don’t mean to stop developing your app strategy but please consider where the real money and profits are in mobile, except for games, they are not in apps. MMS works on over 85% of all phones in use on the planet, well past 3 times more than all smartphones in use. Here is the table putting the various platforms into context:

MOBILE DATA PLATFORMS SUMMER 2014
Rank . . Platform . . . . Units . . . Market share
1 . . . . . Premium SMS . . . 6,000 M (active users, total potential 7.1B but then illiteracy etc)

2 . . . . . WAP . . . . . . . . . . 5,400 M
3 . . . . . MMS . . . . . . . . . . 4,900 M
4 . . . . . HTML . . . . . . . . . 4,400 M
5 . . . . . Java . . . . . . . . . . . 3,900 M
6 . . . . . Android . . . . . . . . 1,336 M

7 . . . . . iOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 M
8 . . . . . Tablets (all OS) . . . 275 M

9 . . . . . Windows Phone . . . . 53 M

10 . . . . Blackberry . . . . . . . . 44 M

11 . . . . Symbian . . . . . . . . . . 41 M

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 15 August 2014, based on manufacturer and industry data

This table may be freely shared

If you develop for the Emerging World markets, you do Premium SMS, WAP as your primary platforms. You add Java, HTML and Android as the specialized premium services and thats it. Remember about a quarter of phones in the region are second-hand phones ie older premium and mid-range Nokias and Samsungs.

If you develop for the rich Industrialized World, you do Android and iPhone. You also add Premium SMS, MMS and HTML. Your premium effort then goes to the advanced side in Augmented Reality, NFC etc.

 

Windows Phone, Symbian and bada have died. Blackberry only lives now in the enterprise sector and is sinking even there.

Yes, the hype stage of smartphone apps is starting to be over and we are approximately at ‘peak app’ point in time, soon the new production of apps will stall and settle and perhaps even decline. And many who now do apps development will tire of the chore and move on. There are far easier ways to make money in mobile than apps.


ADDENDUM 3 SEPTEMBER

As I return from vacation I found over 60 comments and very lively and detailed discussion it he comments thread. In it some argued that its not possible to use SMS for such services as Uber or Facebook or Twitter etc. I understand this view but it is not based on facts. Pakistan's most used social network is called SMSall which has over 10 million users and mimicks Facebook and Twitter functionality from likes to hashtags. Like Facebook and Twitter, SMSall in Pakistan is free to regular users on 'normal' volume of social media activity (typical for say a family user or a student). It is not primarily funded by advertising, but it pays for SMS traffic to the networks - it operates on all Pakistani networks and works obviously on all phones not just smartphones. Because every message is paid for by SMSall, the carriers/operators love it. The service was not launched by a big media brand, it was launched by a couple of smart university students and its launch was very literally a 'garage' start-up business. Its now expanding abroad.

Same for just about any major apps-based consumer idea, it can be done on the mobile web or often even with MMS or SMS. Look at Uber. Then go to India and see what is Autoraja or Autowale or mGaadi. They are all Uber clones but all done with SMS. This is not limited to the Emerging World, just last week we heard that Square is now adding SMS functionality to its USA based mobile payments platform, so that American Square users can send money to those Americans who don't use Square or don't even have a smartphone yet (one third of US mobile phone users). This is what Peggy Anne Salz was just teaching in her latest video and book about how smartphone app developers can build better engagement with their audiences - by using SMS. I totally undrestand that the knee-jerk reaction to Tomi saying 'SMS' is to respond that you can't do Facebook on SMS or you can't do Uber on SMS or you can't send money via SMS etc. That is simply not true. My mission here on this blog is not to perpetuate myths but rather to expose the facts and try to help my readers to find the best chances of success in mobile. Its a rough enough game as it is, without taking the most difficult path. MMS alone is twice as big in revenues than total smartphone apps industry globally, and MMS works on 3x more phones than the bestselling smartphone app platform, Android. And SMS, not total person-to-person SMS, just premium SMS alone (media content etc via SMS) is worth more than 4 times the total global smartphone apps revenues and reaches 5 times larger installed base of devices than all smartphones in use worldwide. Can you understand why I mention the reailty of SMS or MMS or hte other major platforms when people push the hype of smartphone apps.


All of the tables and stats in this story may be freely shared and used in any way you want including creating tables and infographics, quoting in print, using in slides etc. Please mention this blog and link to this article if you write about these stats somewhere online.

For those who want deeper data on handset industry my TomiAhonen Phone Book statistical volume is updated every 2 years in the summer. the last edition was 2012, the new 2014 edition is coming soon. If you buy the 2012 edition now, you will receive both for the same low price, the 2012 edition immediately and the 2014 edition as it is released in some weeks from now. To see what kind of info it contains, see this link TomiAhonen Phone Book.

First Time Ever Anywhere: International Data on Smartphone Unique Owner Installed Base - Including regional smartphone ownership analysis

I love statistics! Numbers are my buddies. And today TNS is one of my best buddies evah, as they have released their survey data on 54 countries and ownership of smartphones (and of tablets, and of PCs). Plus tons of other awesome data you just HAVE to see.. Its an interactive website and you can do X/Y positioning etc... Really really great stuff, thank you TNS !!! (And thank you Google for providing this data)

The data is what TNS has been collecting over time so you see time-series per country as well. And as they have been adding countries to their survey data, you also notice the number of countries growing in their sample. They have not measured how many smartphones are sold, or how many smartphones are in use. These numbers will invariably include multiple ownership (one person having two smartphones). What TNS has done, is surveyed individual ownership status. Who owns at least one smartphone. So they are actually measuring for us 'unique users' and that is awesome and valuable data for almost anyone in the mobile industry. And their data right off the website is extremely useful right off the bat (especially as it also includes tablet ownership separately, so you can get that split where some reports will lump tablets 'as mobile' devices haha where we know moblie phones are distinct devices from tablets. Tablets are not 'mobile' they are only ultraportable PCs. And increasingly that thought, what I've been talking about for years, is starting to be the accepted position also among the PC and tablet makers...

But back to what we have. Now, when you look at some market data, the reported TNS data is very similar to what we have recently seen in other sources. That makes it very credible. Now, next, we want to know what is the exact definition of what they surveyed. It is not ownership of smartphones 'per capita' ie across the total population. It is of 'adult' population ownership only. They define adult as anyone age 16 or above. That used to be a good metric for smartphones but is no longer really a good cut-off age limit, as especially in the Industrialized World, many teens well below that age have smartphones. But its good for us to know, because now the data is more meaningful. And the above 16 year issue may not seem obvious to consider, but in Japan 85% of the total population is over age 16 but in Nigeria only 52% of the population is older than 16 years of age. Aha, so we need to adjust the numbers for the total population, not just 'adult' population. The 'per capita' measure - across all ages including babies, is the best measure in mobile and it is the one we use for all mobile stats nowadays. So I have done that math for you.

And now the very good news. Across almost all major Industrialized World countries, UK, Germany, USA, Australia, Singapore, etc the data is VERY well consistent with other reported data such as ComScore and Nielsen and various national regulators etc. This gives us very good confidence that their data is solid.

But then when we look at what it reports for India, for China, for Indonesia.. in fact essentially all Emerging World countries, unfortunately the TNS data is skewing far FAR too high. That means (very likely, I do not know for sure) that TNS has probably only surveyed 'Metropolitan' users ie city dwellers, not the total population. This is quite common for example for many China and India stats by several of the major analysts. So what I did, was adjust all Emerging World market countries (aka 'Developing World') downards, to the nearest known number. 

Then we have one more issue. Youth ownership of smartphones. It may surprise some of the readers visiting this blog rarely, but will not be a surprise to regular readers or my Twitter feed at @tomiahonen that youth own very highly smartphones in the Industrialized World, especially Europe and the Advanced countries of Asia-Pacific like Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Australia..So I just assigned an arbitrary number, that half of the age group from 12 years to 15 years have smartphones at the same rate as adults (and the other half don't own smartphones but typically will all have dumbphones/featurephones if not smartphones). For North America ie USA and Canada I assigned only 25% as the value rather than half, as their mobile stats consistently lag all Western European and Advanced Asia-Pacific stats including obviously smartphone stats.

Now, with the TNS survey data as the base data input, but with many TomiAhonen Consulting adjustments to the data, we have the world's first public source published data on unique smartphone ownership numbers globally. I have data on 50 major mobile countries on all 6 inhabited continents and also the 8 regions that I also use in the TomiAhonen Almanac and the TomiAhonen Phone Book statistical volumes. Separately, I have then used my company stats to assign the second smartphone ownership to the regions, so we have that data too, on a regional basis.

Let me reiterate. This is actual, unique smartphone owners in absolute numbers (millions of humans) across all ages, not just adults. Some data has been made public of that by some organizations like ComScore and Nielsen etc, but only of a few countries. Never for 50 countries and now we also have May 2014 dated regional ownership data on smartphones. This data will be included in the brand new 2014 edition of the TomiAhonen Phone Book.

UNIQUE SMARTPHONE OWNERSHIP STATISTICS BY COUNTRY AND AS PERCENT OF POPULATION

Country . . . . . . . Unique Smartphone Owners . . . . As Pct of Total Population all ages
Argentina . . . . . . 9.5 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  23%
Australia . . . . . . 12.1 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56%
Austria . . . . . . . . 4.0 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48%
Belgium . . . . . . . . 3.7 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35%
Brazil . . . . . . . . . 41.5 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21%
Bulgaria . . . . . . . . 1.9 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26%
Canada . . .  . . . . 16.2 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47%
China . . . . . . . . 450.4 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33%
Colombia . . . . . . 14.8 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31%
Czech Republic . . 3.8 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37%
Denmark . . . . . . . 3.3 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60%
Egypt . . . . . . . . .11.0 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13%
Finland . . . . . . . . 2.7 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50%
France . . . . . . . .26.6 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42%
Germany . . . . . .35.3 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43%
Greece . . . . . . . .4.1 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37%
Hong Kong . . . . . 5.0 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63%
Hungary . . . . . . . 3.2 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32%
India . . . . . . . . . 85.9 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7%
Indonesia . . . . . .38.5 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17%
Ireland . . . . . . . . . 2.6 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56%
Israel . . . . . . . . . . 3.7 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53%
Italy . . . . . . . . . . 27.4 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46%
Japan . . . . . . . . .52.9 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42%
Malaysia . . . . . . 10.0 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36%
Mexico . . . . . . . 30.7 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28%
New Zealand . . . . 2.2 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51%
Netherlands . . . . . 9.2 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55%
Nigeria . . . . . . . .31.1 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18%
Norway . . . . . . . . 2.9 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59%
Philippines . . . . 16.4 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16%
Poland . . . . . . . 13.6 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36%
Portugal . . . . . . . 3.2 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30%
Romania . . . . . . . 5.8 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28%
Russia . . . . . . . . 50.4 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36%
Saudi Arabia . . . . 15.8 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53%
Singapore . . . . . . . 3.5 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71%
Slovakia . . . . . . . . 2.3 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42%
South Africa . . . . 15.5 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31%
South Korea . . . . 32.4 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67%
Spain . . . . . . . . . 27.4 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60%
Sweden . . . . . . . . 6.0 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65%
Switzerland . . . . . 4.0 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52%
Taiwan . . . . . . . . 13.1 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57%
Thailand . . . . . . . 19.1 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28%
Turkey . . . . . . . . 20.2 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27%
UK . . . . . . . . . . 35.8 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58%
Ukraine . . . . . . . . 8.7 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19%
USA . . . . . . . . 148.5 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47%
Vietnam . . . . . . 14.9 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16%

Rest of World . .188.7 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10%

WORLD TOTAL 1,591 Million (1.6 Billion) . . . . . . . . 22%

NOTE: Above is 'unique' smartphone users, many who may own 2 smartphones or have multiple SIM cards or a second dumbphone. Total global smartphone installed base is 1.83 Billion when multiple smartphone ownership is included.

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 21 August 2014, based significantly on TNS survey data as of May 2014
This table may be freely shared


Isn't that cool? First time ever we have unique smartphone owners on this many countries. Noiw remember, we cannot do a 'migration rate' count by mutiplying those unique owner smartphone numbers against subscriber counts, as subscriber numbers now exceed 100% per capita (in leading countries over 200% per capita) ie many of us have two or three or more active SIM cards/subscriptions. If you wanted to do migration-rate calculation you would need total unique mobile phone owners per country (for some countries we do have that data in the public domain, but only a few).

So if you wanted to consider where to launch your apps or what is the market size for your service or release a new type of phone or some accessories etc, that table is the best data we've ever seen of how many people actually own a premium phone/smartphone in those countries. Globally the unique smartphone owner number is 1.6 Billion or 22% of the planet's population.

TOP 12 COUNTRIES BY HIGHEST PENETRATION PER CAPITA

Singapore . . . . 71%
South Korea . . 67%
Sweden . . . . .  65%
Hong Kong . . . 63%
Spain . . . . . . .  60%
Denmark . . . . . 60%
Norway . . . . . . 59%
UK . . . . . . . . . 58%
Taiwan . . . . . . 57%
Australia . . . . .56%
Ireland . . . . . . 56%
Netherlands . . 55%

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 21 August 2014, based significantly on TNS survey data as of May 2014
This table may be freely shared

So some comments. Very small countries are not included, so UAE and Macau and Monaco and Luxembourg would all feature very near the top, UAE likely tops.

Many ask about the USA.. it would be just inside the Top 20 in last place tied for 19th with Canada, both at 47% smartphone penetration per capita of unique smartphone owners. 

Japan is not representative of the level of its handset market as normal 'featurephones' ie dumbphones in Japan are often more advanced than average smartphones outside of Japan, typically waterproof with NFC and WiFi and 4G and full internet and apps etc, even on their 'basic phones'. But by the strict defintion of what is a smartphone, yes Japan is ranked tied for 23rd and has 42% penetration per capita of unique users.

Finland is also now a special case. It used to feature near the top in most mobile stats including smartphones but during the Nokia mess, many loyal Nokia consumers in Finland preferred the 'real Nokia' Asha featurephones than the Windows Phone based Lumia smartphones, and thus Finland has regressed and fallen quite far from its Nordic peers in this table. Finland is at rank 17 with 50% smartphone ownership per capita of unique users.

Malaysia once again leads the Emerging World market, at 36% per capita, ahead of China 33% and Colombia and South Africa both at 31%.

TOP 12 LARGEST SMARTPHONE MARKETS BY UNIQUE OWNERS

Country . . . . . . Unique Smartphone Users
China . . . . . . . . 450.4 Million
USA . . . . . . . . . 148.5 Million
India . . . . . . . . . . 85.9 Million
Japan . . . . . . . . . 52.9 Million
Russia . . . . . . . . 50.4 Million
Brazil . . . . . . . . . 41.5 Million
Indonesia . . . . . . 38.5 Million
UK . . . . . . . . . . . 35.8 Million
Germany . . . . . . .35.3 Million
South Korea . . . . 32.4 Million
Nigeria . . . . . . . . 31.1 Million
Mexico . . . . . . . . 30.7 Million

Rest of World . . 558.1 Million

Total uniques . .1,591 Million smartphone owners (who own 1.83 B total smartphones)

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 21 August 2014, based significantly on TNS survey data as of May 2014
This table may be freely shared
 
Essentially two thirds of the total global smartphone ownership (65%) live in those 12 countries with the biggest smartphone unique user base. China has 3 times the number of smatphone unique owners than number 2, the USA. India, while its per-capita smartphone unique ownership is the lowest rate at 7% out of the 50 countries in this survey, is stil the third largest country by installed base of smartphone unique users at 86 million. Where did you think of launching your app or service again? Nigeria, Mexico, Indonesia all hit the Top 12, alongside the BRIC countries.

REGIONAL SPLIT OF SMARTPHONE OWNERSHIP

Region . . . . . . . . . Unique SmPh Owners . . . Pct of Total Pop . . Second SmPhones . . Total Smarphones
West Europe . . . . . 243 Million . . . . . . . . . . . 49% . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Million . . . . . . . . . 342 Million
East Europe . . . . . 114 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . 39% . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Million . . . . . . . . . .122 Million
North America . . . . 163 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . 47% . . . . . . . . . . 25 Million . . . . . . . . . 188 Million
Latin America . . . . . 77 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . 24% . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Million . . . . . . . . . . 82 Million
APAC Advanced . .  124 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . 50% . . . . . . . . . . 50 Million . . . . . . . . . 174 Million
Asia Emerging . . . . 689 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . 20% . . . . . . . . . . 48 Million . . . . . . . . . 737 Million
Middle East . . . . . . . 50 Million . . . . . . . . . . . . 24% . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Million . . . . . . . . . . 54 Million
Africa . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Million . . . . . . . . . . . .21% . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Million . . . . . . . . , 128 Million

TOTAL UNIQUE . . 1,578 Million (1.6 Billion). . . . 22% . . . . . . . . . 245 Million . . . . . . . 1,827 Million (1.8 Billion)

Total Smartphones 1,833 Million (1.8 Billion) - includes multiple ownership

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 21 August 2014, based significantly on TNS survey data as of May 2014
This table may be freely shared

Yes, we now can see the regoinal smartphone ownership data too, by unique owners and by percent of total regional population per capita, Advanced Asia-Pacific region is world leader where 50% of total population alive already owns at least one smartphone. West Europe close behind at 49%. North America next at 47%. Africa is last, but even in Africa, across the whole population, one in five today owns a smartphone! Wow.

For those who want deeper data on handset industry my TomiAhonen Phone Book statistical volume is updated every 2 years in the summer. the last edition was 2012, the new 2014 edition is coming soon. If you buy the 2012 edition now, you will receive both for the same low price, the 2012 edition immediately and the 2014 edition as it is released in some weeks from now. To see what kind of info it contains, see this link TomiAhonen Phone Book.

Smartphone Top 10 for Q2 of 2014, same ole same ole..

Time for Q2 smartphone bloodbath update. So it seems like Gartner has stopped releasing quarterly smartphone market share stats. That is a shame as Gartner was among the best in that count. But we'll continue with the 3 remaining big houses, IDC, Canalys and Strategy Analytics, using their total number as the input into th eaverage of the three for our total market size. And we get a Q2 market count of 296.2 million smartphones which is up 5% from Q1. The migration rate in new handset sales is already at 58% of all phones sold are now smarpthones. If you want the Q1 numbers they are here.

 

CORRECTION Oct 16 2014 - as Xiaomi and Coolpad have released their H1 stats for 2014 after I posted this chart, I have now updated the numbers which shifted Xiaomi up and Coolpad down on the chart and changed some positions of ranks between those two.


UPDATE Aug 21, 2014: Just spotted on Motley Fool, a story quoting Gartner giving 301.3M as the total market size for smartphones in Q2 of 2014. I went to Gartner site and at least now, they do not have the news as a press release, but if they do, I will add that. I hope Gartner keeps reporting the quarterly data. But at least there is a source quoting their number. The total average goes up now to 297.5M (growth of 6% from Q1). I have updated the stats to reflect that number.

 

Here is the table of the Top 10 smartphone brands in Q2 of 2014:

 

BIGGEST SMARTPHONE MANUFACTURERS BY UNIT SALES IN Q2 2014

Rank . . Manufacturer . Units . . . Market Share . Was Q1 2014 . . OS systems supported (coming)
1 (1) . . Samsung . . . .  74.1 M . . 24.9% . . . . . . . ( 30.7% ) . . . . . . Android, Windows (Tizen)
2 (2) . . Apple  . . . . . . . 35.2 M . . 11.8% . . . . . . . ( 15.5% ) . . . . . . iOS
3 (4) . . Lenovo  . . . . . . 15.8 M . . . 5.2% . . . . . . . (   5.0% ) . . . . . . Android (Tizen)
4 (3) . . Huawei  . . . . . . 15.6 M . . . 5.2% . . . . . . . (   6.4% ) . . . . . . Android (Tizen)
5 (8) . . Xiaomi . . . . . . . .15.1 M . . . 5.1% . . . . . . .  (   3.9% ) . . . . . . Android
6 (5) . . LG  . . . . . . . .  . 14.5 M . . . 4.9% . . . . . . . (   4.4% ) . . . . . . Android
7 (7) . . Coolpad/Yulong . 11.9 M . . . 4.0% . . . . . . . (   3.9% ) . . . . . . Android
8 (6) . . ZTE  . . . . . . . . . 10.5 M . . . 3.5% . . . . . . . (   3.0% ) . . . . . . Android, Windows (Firefox)
9 (9) . . Sony . . . . . . . . . . 8.8 M . . . 3.0% . . . . . . . (   3.4% ) . . . . . . Android
10 ( - ) . Motorola (Google) . 8.6 M . . . 2.9% . . . . . . .(   - - -  ) . . . . . . . Android
Others . . . . . . . . . . . .  88.8 M
TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . .  296.2 M
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 15 August 2014, based on manufacturer and industry data
This table may be freely shared

 

So Nokia who invented the smartphone, fell out of the Top 10 in the last quarter when it still existed as an independent smartphone manufacturer (the handset unit was transferred to Microsoft ownership in late April). But Motorola makes a surprise comeback as it is preparing for shift in ownership from Google to Lenovo. If Motorola is added to Lenovo's production, Lenovo gets to 8% market share and nearly 24 million smartphones sold per quarter (almost 100 million per year) and a very clear number 3 position. (the above chart has been corrected after comment from reader pointed to offical Lenovo Q2 number)

 

Samsung had a horrible quarter crashing market share from 31% to 25%. While still mroe than twice as big as the number 2 (Apple), Samsung saw its profits take a big hit too and is facing competition on all fronts and the Galaxy line's lustre is now dulled. Time for Samsung to dazzle us with something new and amazing. If this is a one-quarter one-off blip, then Samsung should be fine, but if they see another quarter of a drop in market share now into Q3, that would be a danger-sign for the boys of Gangnam.

 

The iPhone also saw a big drop from Q1 but that is normal sales pattern every year for Apple as we arrive to the end of the previous iPhone product cycle and await the next iPhone models coming out in September. But the annual iPhone market share has peaked and is in perennial decline. The annual market share for Apple is now projecting to hit around 14% for full year 2014. 

 

The fight for number 4 is raging with Huawei nicely already positioned with good sales beyond China, but Lenovo, Xiaomi and Coolpad following ZTE and Huawei to markets beyond China. Sony is now on the bubble but the next tier such as Micromax of India is still a way off, so if Sony can find some smartphone sales growth, they might not go the way of Blackberry, HTC and Nokia, tumbling out of the Top 10. LG had a strong quarter and shows promise their turnaround is finally complete. Then lets do the Android table, sorry, the smartphone OS table:

BIGGEST SMARTPHONE OPERATING SYSTEMS BY UNIT SALES IN Q2 2014

Rank . OS Platform . . . . Units . . . . Market share . Was Q1 2014 . . Manufacturers in Top 10
1 (1) . . Android . . . . . . . 253.1 M . .  85.1 % . . . . . ( 81.0 %) . . . . . Samsung, Huawei, Lenovo, LG, ZTE, Sony, Yulong/Coolpad, Xiaomi, Motorola/Google
2 (2) . . iOS  . . . . . . . . . . 35.2 M . .  11.8 % . . . . . ( 15.5 %)  . . . . . Apple
3 (3) . . Windows Phone . . 7.4 M . . .  2.5 % . . . . . (  2.2 %) . . . . . . Samsung
4 (4) . . Blackberry . . . . . . 1.6 M . . .  0.5 % . . . . . (  1.1 %) . . . . . . (None)
others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.2 M . . .  0.1 % . . . . . (   0.1 %)
TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . . .  297.5 M
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 15 August 2014, based on manufacturer and industry data
This table may be freely shared

 

Yeah Android blah-blah-blah. Windows Phone dead blah-blah-blah..

 

Then lets do the update to the installed base of smartphones in use worldwide:

 

INSTALLED BASE OF SMARTPHONES BY OPERATING SYSTEM AS OF 30 JUNE 2014

Rank . OS Platform . . . . Units . . . Market share  Was Q1 2014 . Main Manufacturers of current base
1 . . . . Android . . . . . . 1,336 M . . . 72 % . . . . . . ( 69 %) . . . . . . Samsung, Huawei, Sony, Lenovo, ZTE, LG, Coolpad, HTC, Xiaomi, Motorola/Google
2 . . . . iOS  . . . . . . . . . 359 M . . . 19 % . . . . . . ( 21 %) . . . . . . Apple
5 . . . . Windows Phone . . 53 M . . . 3 % . . . . . . (   3 %) . . . . . . Nokia/Microsoft, Samsung, HTC
4 . . . . Blackberry  . . . . .  44 M . . . 2 % . . . . . . (   3 %) . . . . . . Blackberry
3 . . . . Symbian . . . . . .   41 M . . .  2 % . . . . . . (   4 %) . . . . . . Nokia
Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 M . . .  1 %
TOTAL Installed Base . 1,833 M smartphones in use at end of Q2, 2014
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 15 August 2014, based on manufacturer and industry data
This table may be freely shared

 

Yeah this is so over. Android keeps growing to eventually mirror its new sales market share. Apple gradually adjust back to its new sales market share levels. The little boys play for the rest. Windows Phone has now become the third most used smarpthone OS if you want to celebrate that 'achievement' at 3% of the installed base so nobody in their right mind would ever even consider making apps for this dead OS when Windows smarpthones once had 12% market share and Nokia alone under its previous OS Symbian had 35% of smartphones the year before they made the switch to Windows. But technically yes, Windows Phone has now in Q2 finally overataken both Symbian and Blackberry to become in reality 'the third ecosystem' even at its pitiful 3%.

 

So thats what it looks like now as the main battles of the smartphone wars are done and dusted. Thats Q2 for this year.

 

For those who want deeper data on handset industry my TomiAhonen Phone Book statistical volume is updated every 2 years in the summer. the last edition was 2012, the new 2014 edition is coming soon. If you buy the 2012 edition now, you will receive both for the same low price, the 2012 edition immediately and the 2014 edition as it is released in some weeks from now. To see what kind of info it contains, see this link TomiAhonen Phone Book.

The James Bond Selfie Collection Part 2: How is my 007 locations picture collection getting along?

A year ago I posted the first set of my very unsual selfie-collection. I am taking pictures of myself standing in identical locations where a James Bond actor has been in any of the movies. Its my intention to get actual identical-location selfies collected that get me into at least one identifyable location out of every one of the 23 James Bond movies. I posted 18 pictures out of 14 of the Bond films last year. Now its time to see if I’ve found any more of my Bond Selfies, and is my collection getting closer to ‘complete’ haha.. Again, I’ll do this in the chronological sequence of the Bond movies. And yes, readers, this is a posting about my hobby.. hobby.. there is nothing techie or mobile related in this blog today. But if you like James Bond movies, you may enjoy my 007 Selfie collection.

Dr No.

 

So Sean Connery starts our series in 1962. We already have the picture from Jamaica. No updates on Dr No.

 

From Russia with Love

 

Now we have a proper scene in the same location. From Russia is the 007 where the Soviet spy is sent to seduce James Bond and try to sell him the secret decoding machine, to lure James Bond to be killed. Shot in Istanbul and on the famous Oriental Express train etc. Last time I showed I was on the right river but the picture had me facing the wrong bank. I now have a picture of me on the Bosporus in Istanbul. Here is Sean Connery on the boat on the river. Look at the palace in the background.

 

 

 

Then see me, at the same location in Istanbul on a boat on the Bosporus. Same palace. Same location.

 

 

Yes that is the beautiful and iconic Dolmabahce Palace right in Istanbul on the Bosporus. So we now have From Russia with Love added to the collection.

 

Goldfinger

 

Ah, then the plot to detonate a nuclear weapon at Fort Knox to make the world’s gold supply unusable, so the guy who had the largest private collection of gold, Mr Auric Goldfinger, could become the richest man on the planet. Lovely Bond-villainseque plot, eh? Goldfinger first met James Bond face-to-face at the golf course in England. And that scene ends with his henchman, Oddjob using his bowler hat like a frisbee to cut the head off a statue. Remember that? Here is Sean Connery at the 'Royal St Mark's Golf Course’

 

 

And here I am at the same location. The fake statue whose head was chopped off is missing now, but the other statue is still there as is clearly the same building. Alas also no Aston Martin here now..

 

 

In the real world this is the Stoke Poges golf course, rather near to Heathrow Airport outside of London. And I have stood at the exact scene of one of the most memorable Bond moments of the 23 movie history. How cool is that. Now, can my hat do the same to this statue....

 

Thunderball

 

We had this movie already.

 

You Only Live Twice

 

Ah, James Bond’s Japan adventure. He dies in the beginning, then meets Japan’s head of secret service in his underground train-office, has the gyrocopter ‘Little Nellie’ to fly against helicopters for some aerial duelling and the movie ends in the hollowed-out volcano, the most expensive set that James Bond series has ever created. So where have I been? Ah, early in the movie we meet a SPECTRE villain, their Japan boss, a Mr Osato, who is so rich he flies around with a personal helicopter, landing on the roof of his office tower. Yeah, back in the 1960s the helicopter thing was apparently the cool thing to do haha. But that iconic office tower? Here Sean Connery exits the tower to jump into the beautiful white Toyota 2000 sportscar.

 

 

 

And here is the real James Bond at that very same location. That was called the Osato Building in the movie for the Osato Chemical & Engineering Company.

 

 

In reality that is a famous luxury hotel in Tokyo, called the New Otani (there are more than one New Otani hotels, so make sure you go to the right one if you intend to visit it). Just to be very clear, if you doubt me, here is the picture of the hotel so you see that iconic big round piece on the top:

 

 

Yes, clearly it was the New Otani that pretended to be the Osato Chemicals headquarters in 007 You Only Live Twice. So which New Otani Hotel is this? It is 'The Main' New Otani Hotel in Tokyo in Chiyoda-ku. The Hotel complex has grown a lot since the 1967 movie, and now includes two taller towers. If you want to actually sleep in the building then make sure your hotel booking has the room in 'The Main' building, else its just another tall skyscraper hotel in Tokyo haha..

 

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

 

Then the Bond actor was changed for George Lazenby. He only did one movie. This is the one with Telly Savalas as the bad guy and much of the action is in Switzerland, often on top of the mountain, or on the sides of the mountain. The mountain is the Piz Gloria and there is a restaurant on the top. I went to Switzerland and had a rental car to go get the picture at the top of Piz Gloria. And I thought very cleverly that the best time for such a glorious spot is at sunset, but when I arrived the nasty Swiss were closing the mountain? Yes there is no evening restaurant only daytime. Weird. So here I am at the ski lift of Piz Gloria

 

 

And to prove yes, this is the 007 mountain in Switerland, here is the poster at the mountain advertising the 007 experience..

 

 

I wasn’t there on time, I just missed the last ride up the mountain by about 20 minutes. What a waste. But some day I guess I have to rent another car and try again. Why wouldn’t a restaurant on top of the world ‘not’ have their opening hours late enough to catch the sunset? Bizarre

 

Diamonds Are Forever

 

Sean Connery returned for one last official Bond movie (before his yet another return in the unofficial Neer Say Never Again). But this is the last time Sean Connery played 007 officially. And this Bond we already have in my 007 Selfie collection. And Sean Connery movies are now done. I have at least one 007 selfie from each of them.

 

Live And Let Die

 

Next we have Roger Moore coming in a 007. His first was Live and Let Die. And this movie we have in the Bond Selfie collection.

 

Man With Golden Gun

 

And we have this already in the collection.

 

The Spy Who Loved Me

 

This I don’t yet have the proper ‘Bond Scene’ but have pictures at some of the landmarks like the Pyramids. So I still have some work to do.

 

Moonraker

 

Here too I have pictures near the proper places but don’t have the perfect shot yet. So this I still have to hunt.

 

For Your Eyes Only

 

If you remember last time, FYEO was the movie where my ‘proof’ of having been to the country where the film was shot, was the furthest from the actual locations for the movie. Usually I have at least some landmark in the same city for example. Well, I burned some FF miles over New Year’s and went back to Greece to get ‘the’ picture for this movie. I went to Meteora and it is a fabulous, spectacular place, most definitely worth seeing all by itself, without the Bond stuff.

Which Bond is this? The lost spy boat on the Mediterranean, the daughter of the killed spies chases the bad guys and Bond gets tangled in the process, they end up in Greece climbing up the vertical cliff mountain to capture the villain’s lair on the top. That one. Good Moore Bond actually, very good plot and good action and Roger is not too old yet. So, here he is in Greece, in front of an iconic mountain from Meterora: Roger Moore is second man from the right, with the red, in nearly profile.

 

 

 

And has the real James Bond been to the same location? Check out the evidence!

 

 

 

That mountain on the left with the sheer drop on all sides, is where the Monstery of the Holy Trinity is in Meteora. This picture is taken in the wilderness almost exactly NorthWest from the Monastery. So it is on the opposite side of the town of Kalabaka where the railroad is. The way I am facing, about 200 meters ahead of me is a Y-shaped road crossing with three roads leading to: 1) Monastery of Great Meteoron; 2) Katafigio Agrias Zois Kanalaki, and 3) the road to Holy Trinity. The road goes around a depression, small meadow. That is where you need to be, that grassland where the Bond picture was shot, in that area down from the road.

 

This was the most difficult scene yet for me to get. I went literally three times up that mountain road to finally spot the exact picture location. I thought at one point that the picture was shot in the town, and walked up and down various paths and just couldn’t get it, until I compared very carefully not just the mountain with the monastery, but also the mountains next to it. Then it became obvious where the camera had to have been, and then finding the spot was easy. Took me three attempts up the mountain, took my picture in the morning just before I had to rush to catch my train away from the area..

 

You can also imagine my concern, as I had already made 2 attempts up the mountain, and I had travelled quite a lot to get to this place, I knew it was the right place but I had to get the right picture and my time was running out (and the return train would get me eventually to my flight, so there was no chance to stay an extra day)

 

Octopussy

 

Then we had one picture from Octopussy already last time, but as that was with 007 at a London landmark (Sotheby’s auction house entrance) that wasn’t enough for my ‘proper’ collection. Much of Octopussy happened in India (the fake crocodile as boat, Octopussy island with the women guards, the chase with elephants etc). I had on a previous work visit to India attempted to get the pictures but I was not in the right city (I had bad info). Now I was able to get to where the scenes were shot, in a pretty city called Udaipur (roughly between New Delhi and Mumbai aka Bombay). Here is Roger Moore taking a tuktuk taxi through some iconic gates in town of Udaipur:

 

 

 

And here is the real bond at those same gates:

 

 

Ha! I have a Bond Location in India and Octpussy is now properly covered. That gate is actually the entrance/exit to the Shiv Niwas Palace Hotel. But yes, while I was there, I also took some more pictures. So, here is Roger Moore looking out to Udaipur from his hotel window at the Shiv Niwas Palace:

 

 

And here I am below that same window of the same hotel (oh, and I even stayed at that hotel).

 

 

Cool, eh? Octopussy is now done and India formally added to my Bond Selfie collection.

 

A View to a Kill

 

I have pictures with the landmarks but not the right scene yet, those still need to be taken.

 

The Living Daylights

 

I have Timothy Dalton’s first Bond movie

 

Licence to Kill

 

I also had this movie already but the main movie action happens in an imaginary country called Isthmus. So this we have to get, as the country does not exist. I had actually visited earlier in my life one of the real world buildings that pretended to be Isthmus - the scenes representing Isthmus were shot in Mexico. So the Main Post Office of Mexico City (Palacio de Correos de Mexico) is the beautiful building we see the interior, when James Bond deposits his millions that he stole from the drug kingpin, to the Central Bank of Isthmnus. The time I visited the Main Post Office was years before this hobby and I didn’t think of taking the Bond scene selfie. So on a recent trip in Latin America I stopped by in Mexico City to take the Isthnus related Selfie. Unfortunately I arrived too late for the Post Office but there were other scenes, so I took the shot inside the Isthmus Grand Hotel. This too is in Mexico City as it in real life is the Gran Hotel Ciudad de Mexico. Here is Timothy Dalton at the elevator inside the hotel:

 

 

 

Here is the same hotel, same floor, today. The elevator was not in use when I was at the hotel, I think its now mainly a decoration. But note the intricate detail on the ironworks and the overall layout of the hotel. Yes, its the exact same elevator yes.

 

 

Now, unfortunately not very sharp as my selfie shot in the dark, but clearly the real Bond James Bond has been captured also at that same elevator in the same hotel (and yes, I also stayed at this hotel, so I’ve stayed in two proper James Bond hotels so far)

 

 

So the two Timothy Dalton movies are also now 'done'.

 

Goldeneye

 

We have the first Pierce Brosnan Bond

 

Tomorrow Never Dies

 

We also have this.

 

The World is Not Enough

 

And we have this.

 

Die Another Day

 

I had the harbor scene from Die Another Day when Bond with big beard escapes the British prison/hospital on a warship, and swims ashore and climbs up before checking into the hotel. (it is strange that they made that hotel imaginary, as Bond had previosly been seen at the Peninsula Hotel and Hong Kong is full of iconic beautiful tall skyscrapers many of which no doubt would have wanted that movie reference haha) But yeah. I had the picture of me by the shore in Hong Kong at the iconic backdrop, except  my picture was in daylight and Bond escaped at night. So now I have that picture also in night time. Here is Pierce at the Hong Kong Victoria Harbor

 

 

And here is the real Bond in the same place, now also at night but about a decade later

 

 

So now also the four Pierce Brosnan 007 movies are 'done'.

 

Casino Royale

 

We had the first Daniel Craig movie already.

 

Quantum of Solace

 

Ah, and Bond saving Latin America from a man-made water shortage catastrophy. A bit more environmentally relevant plot perhaps. Much of this movie happens supposedly in Bolivia but that was actually shot in Chile and in Panama. So I burned a few miles to visit Panama for the first time in my life, just a brief one-night holiday stop-over to take one picture. My Bond Selfie. Here is Daniel Craig walkinginto the lobby of the Andean Grand Hotel, in La Paz Bolivia.

 

 

And here I am at the exact same location just inside those doors..

 

 

So. La Paz the capital of Bolivia in South America? No, this is Panama City and the old town. The building that pretended to be the Andean Grand Hotel is no hotel at all. It is the Instituto Nacional de Cultura. It was not open for public when I visited, but the security guard was nice enough to let me just step inside the door to take this selfie (I also would have had the picture from outside anyway).

James Bond pretended to visit Bolivia but in reality he visited Chile and Panama. I have never visited Bolivia yet (its one of the last 5 of the 50 Bond countries that I have not yet visited but of course intend to). I have visited both Chile and Panama. And according to Bond movie evidence I apparently have also been inside the Andean Grand Hotel of La Paz Bolivia haha..

 

Skyfall

 

Skyfall is the latest Bond movie and is like two disjointed Bond plots were force-married into one movie. The first half is an unfit Bond returning to duty after vanishing in Istanbul, to go fighting in Shanghai, gambling in Macau, chasing a villain in Asia. Bond can’t even shoot straight but with the help of the British Secret Service and its gadgets, directs the Royal Marines to invade Chinese air space with helicopters to capture the villain. The second half is a supremely-fit Bond as lone-wolf taking his boss hostage, setting up at a farmhouse in Scotland, away from any support, and with essentially his bare hands, takes on literally an army of villains who attack by helicopter - and no British Marines will fly in to rescue Bond and the boss of MI6. Yeah. Very plausible and utterly silly plot. Like a rejected plot of Die Hard, meets a rejected plot of Jason Bourne. And neither of these two heroes we see are even remotely like James Bond in his past 22 movies. Even both women he tries to defend in these two rejected plots, are killed. What is wrong with Bond?

 

With all that bickering done, what about the Bond Selfies? Well, one of my coolest pictures in the collection is from inside a building. Remember the fight in Shanghai? The tall skyscraper, the elevator, the sniper, etc.. Well, part of the scenes were shot in Shanghai and when Daniel Craig swims at the hotel rooftop pool, the background seen in the movie was really Shanghai. But the skyscraper that Bond has his fight in? That was not Shanghai. That was not China. That was not Asia. That was Blighty. That was England, yes London. The skyscraper is in reality the Broadgate Tower in Bishopgate in London. And we see it quite well in the shots that set up the fight, with Bond parked outside in his car, seeing the assassin enter the building entrance. If you know the building, it is unmistakable. And I did take a selfie on the outside, but by chance, it being a private building, I was able to have a business meeting with one of the companies that operate in that building.. ah! I was able to get a rare inside-building shot into my collection. If you remember Daniel Craig comes up escallators that have very ‘Shanghai-esque’ neon lighting on the sides of the escallators, blue and green. Well, here is Daniel Craig up that escallator ‘in Shanghai’

 

 

and here is the real James Bond at the same escallator! Note the blue neon lights and the pillars at an angle etc..

 

 

Haha, its a busy building and I had to take several pictures until I got one that didn’t have other people’s faces showing up to spoil my 007 Selfie.

 

Now on the latest Bond Daniel Craig is taken to the villain’s lair that is quite different from all previous villain’s lairs. This one is not glitzy or glamorous or luxurious, quite the contrary. The abandoned and crumbling town on the deserted island in Macau. It was not a studio set-up and it was not even Hollywood set-design magic on a real city. That place is real and not staged. So first, what am I talking about: This island, you remember, where Bond was taken after he was captured in Macau. Daniel Craig in white shirt stands here on the yacht as it nears the deserted city island:

 

 

 

And here is my selfie leading up to the same island:

 

 

What is that place? It is a real place obviously but it is not in Macau. It is actually in Japan. The island is called Gunkanjima ie ‘battleship island’ because its profile looks like a WW2 era battleship, look at this picture for example, and imagine seeing that in your periscope on a dark rainy night.. Battleship ahoy!

 

 

Gunkanjima Island is in Nagasaki Japan. It was once the most densely populated space on the planet, a tiny island totally built up, so that gardens and children’s playgrounds were then built on top of the buildings as there was no ground left to utilize. The whole island was employed by staff who worked in a coal mine by Mitsubishi, which extended far underneath the sea and miles and miles of mineshafts, and that island was the entrance and exit to the coal mine. The above picture is my photoshop adaptation for a simulated night shot. This is the same picture in daylight and you see now the buildings:

 

 

So all who lived on the island were miners or some people supporting them like the hospital, school etc. And when the mine was shut down in 1974 the whole island became uninhabited, there was no work and they all left. But up to that point many who lived on the tiny island had never even visited mainland Japan, ie spent their whole life on that tiny island the size of a couple of city blocks of concrete. The place is eerie and looks like a post-apocalyptic place, If you ever wanted to see what happens to our massive cities of concrete jungles, after only a couple of decades of neglect. What will humankind leave behind if our species becomes wiped out in some accident or war? Go visit Gunkanjima to see that scenario. It is eerie. if you are near Nagasaki, go visit Gunkanjima it is one of the weirdest places on the planet. And yes, this is one of the few places that also understands its role in cinema history, look at the signage at the boat tour that goes to the island:

 

 

And now all three first Daniel Craig 007 movies are also 'done'. I am missing only four movies from which I have not yet got the proper selfie but from each of those four, I do have myself at a landmark recognized form the movie. But yes, those still need to be done, and a few other 007 selfies I will still go collect while I hunt those last four. Probably this time next year this collection will be essentially done.

 

So thats what we have now... Another ten 007 Selfies into my collection. So thats how the Bond Locations Collection is doing now. I've now also added more 007 countries and have visited 43 real countries and both of the two imaginary countries. In pursuing the wish to visit every one of the James Bond countries as seen on screen, I am down to the last 5 out of 50 to go. So what I now still need are Afghanistan, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan and North Korea. (if you happen to know of a telecoms conference held in one of those, do let me know haha, or if your company has some business there and would like a seminar or workshop, I am all yours haha). The other Bond countries are all 'done' even as I don't have pictures from all of them. And perhaps this is the most astonishing stat. I have had the privilege to speak at conferences held in 30 of those 48 real existing James Bond countries (ie 63%). If you want to see the previous collection last year, those Bond Selfie pictures are here.

Finally, to be clear. As I wrote last year, for the legal issues about copyright. I have already contacted the owners of the Bond movies and asked for permission to use these screen shots of the movies. I did that more than a year ago, and I have not heard them saying I could not use the screen shots. I have of course purchased each of the DVDs. I am using this blog article only for research use - a reason which exists for exception in copyright law, allowing 'fair use'. I am researching and documenting the exact camera locations for these sites, and sharing, totally free and with no commercial or other gains to me, those locations for other Bond fans to also be able to find and enjoy. No such complete record exists as far as I know. I have no subscriptions, no registrations and no fees to this blog. I have no interest in selling anything Bond-related. My blog is about technology and as I am already rated by Forbes as the most influential expert of my field, I cannot possibly have any reason whatsoever to try to create more traffic to this blog (this blog is not for sale, will never be). This blog article cannot in any way be seen as damaging to the Bond franchise but can only be seen as a love-letter to the movies and one that encourages Bond fans to experience their passion even more deeply. But if Bond licence holders contact me and instruct me to take any of the screen shots off this blog, of course I will do so immediately. My contact information is tomi at tomiahonen dot com. 

On a silly note. I love this hobby, I really do. I've been discussing this with many people since I started, and if the other person is a Bond fan, we've had lots of good discussions and I've often learned much more about the movies and locations and stories. If anyone out there among my readers happens to be a billionaire or multi-multi-millionaire, who is a huge Bond fan, and wants to visit real 007 locations and has the jet fuelled and ready to go, I'll be happy to be your guide. If there's a wife of such a rich dude, who knows her husband has already bought anything he might ever want, but the wife wants to give a once-in-a-lifetime experience to her Bond-fan husband, I've got the perfect week around the world, or two weeks, or how much time you can get your hubby to spare. And wouldn't you know it, while I might help your husband find the exact scene for Bond, you might prefer to spend your time in that town at the shopping malls in such shopping mecchas as Tokyo, Hong Kong, Paris, London, New York and San Francisco. Or if you prefer the beaches, then Bond's been to just about all the paradises from Phuket to Bahamas, from Rio to the Keys, from Cote d'Sur to Jamaica... Drop me a note. 

Camera Stats: World has 5.8B Cameras by 4B Unique Camera Owners: 89% of camera owners use a cameraphone to take pictures; This year first time 1 Trillion pictures are taken

I am working on the 2014 edition of the TomiAhonen Phone Book, a statistical volume about the handset industry which comes out every two years. In it, among the 100 stats, are some numbers and charts about cameraphones. And while working to update those, I have been digging for some very elusive stats about cameras, cameraphones, photographs, and their populations and usage. So I want to share here what I’ve found, as I don’t see anywhere a recent calculation of the total universe of cameras including the most popular camera type by usage, the cameraphone.

STATISTCIAL SUMMARY

For those who only want the numbers and don't care how I calculated them, here is the summary for 2014:

World new sales total cameras 2014: 1.8 Billion cameras for consumers (excluding webcams and security cams etc). 95% of those are cameraphones on mobile phones, 5% are traditional stand-alone cameras.

Global installed base of cameras still operational is 5.8 Billion units. Out of those only 4.0 B are in use (as cameras, most that 'are not used' are on mobile phones/smartphones which are used in other ways but not for their camera). Of the 4 B cameras in use, 440 million (11%) are stand-alone 'traditional' digital cameras and 3.56 B (89%) of all cameras in use on the planet today are on mobile phones/smartphones as cameraphones. Beyond those there are another 1.2 Billion cameraphones not used because their user has a better camera on his/her other smartphone/cameraphone, and 180 million older digital cameras sit in our homes forgotten and forlorn.

The average stand-alone digital camera user takes 375 pictures in 2014 while the average cameraphone user snaps 259 pictures this year. When multipled across the total user bases, that produces 1 Trillion (1,000 Billion) photographs taken this year by digital camera owners. That brings humankind's cumulative picture production total to 5.7 Trillion photographs taken since the first camera was invented.

All stats in this blog that are not otherwise sourced, are from TomiAhonen Phone Book 2014. You may quote all data and stats on this blog and use them for infographics, slides, whatever you want, as long as you credit the source as TomiAhonen Phone Book 2014. I would appreciate it, if you create an online article or blog about these numbers, that you also link to this blog. With that, for the propeller-heads, here is the full story:

 

MIGRATION FROM STAND-ALONE TO CAMERAPHONE

We’ve seen for years now the gradual migration from dedicated stand-alone cameras to cameraphones. In 2012 the O2 All About You survey of UK mobile subscribers found that 39% of mobile phone users had abandoned using a stand-alone camera and had switched to using the camera on the mobile phone instead. The cameras I talk about in thus study are all digital cameras. Already the older film-based camera base is diminishing to near extinction, less than 1% of all pictures taken are on film as reported by 1000Memories already in 2011. So for this article all stand-alone cameras are ‘digital stand-alone cameras’ as distinct from cameraphones ie mobile phone based cameras. Film based cameras are ignored as being too tiny to matter in the statistics, lost in the rounding-off error. So incidentially are also stand-alone videocameras, a popular category a decade ago but now a miniscule slice of the stand-alone segment. And one more clarification, I will ignore all camera units that are webcam attachments for computers, and also any that are pre-installed on laptops for videocalling. And as to tablets, yes, they are an interesting new slice but they too are far too small to matter, and most who own a tablet, have a better camera on their phone, and will tend to use the phone camera instead of the tablet. Not everybody, but far more than half of tablet owners will do that.

 

The stand-alone digital camera sales peaked at about 120 million units sold per year in 2008. From 2010 the stand-alone digital camera sales have been in annual decline according to CIPA statistics (the camera industry association). Currently this year 2014 will see about 95 million stand-alone digital cameras sold. Contrast that with cameraphones, in 2012 MIC (a mobile industry analyst house) reported that 83% of new mobile phones sold had a camera, that was 1.48 Billion cameraphones. So already two years ago 93% of all new cameras sold on the planet were on mobile phones, not on stand-alone cameras. This year 2014 we will see sales of 1.7 Billion cameraphones and about 95 million stand-alone digital cameras, so cameraphones now account for 95% of new camera sales in 2014. Yes, only 5% of all new cameras sold today is a device you buy at a camera store or the camera counter at an electronics store and one that has a brand like Canon or Nikon. The bestselling camera brands today are Samsung, Apple and LG. The Apple iPhone alone will outsell all stand-alone camera brands, Canon, Nikon etc combined, and doubled. Yes even if iPhone sales fell by half by some weird reason today, Apple would still sell more cameras on iPhones alone, ignoring iPads etc, than all Canon, Nikon etc stand-alone cameramakers, combined. Please note, that there is no significant migration 'the other way'. Except those who truly intend a professional photogrpher career (far less than 1% of total cameraphone owners) nobody is abandoning cameraphone usage and switching to stand-alone digital cameras..

UNDERSTANDING CAMERAPHONES
 

Lets also talk a bit about those cameraphones. They are not all smartphones. All smartphones are cameraphones yes, but all cameraphones are not smartphones. No no no no no. Last year was the first year when more than half of phones sold were smartphones. The majority of cameraphones in use still this year 2014 will be ‘dumbphones’ or perhaps more properly labeled ‘featurephones’. Low cost and mid-range phones that do have cameras, often also have touch-screens, but are not smartphones. They do have internet connectivity and can usually also have some apps installed such as using Java, but they are not smartphones. So remember while you and I reading this blog have our Galaxies and iPhones and Xperias, that is not the ‘normal users’ of a cameraphone in the world. The most common type of cameraphones is a ‘featurephone’ so if you think Nokia’s Asha line, that type of phone specs are what the ‘normal’ user of a cameraphone has on the planet, not the iPhone. We’re looking at 2 or 3 megapixel sensors not 8 or 12. But note, its not anymore the VGA resoluton 0.3 megapixel camera either (even though those exist too and some still sell).

 

I wanted to calculate as well as possible the installed base of both cameraphones and stand-alone cameras. Then I also wanted to calculate as close as possible an estimate of the active users. And while I often beg the industry go out and survey cameraphone users for some real statistics, we have precious few. But we have some data points. And they are just about enough for us to create a rudimentary model that is reasonably accurate, as we have nothing better out of survey data.

 

The problem is, that people have multiple devices. And we know that people are migrating their behavior from one to the other. The gap between cameraphones and stand-alone digital cameras is shrinking and in some ways cameraphones have already passed past professional supercameras. The Nokia 808 Pureview with its 41mp sensor was on that metric - image pixel density (sharpness of the image, the level of accuracy that can be captured under ideal lighting conditons) - better than the most expensive professional cameras by Canon and Nikon where the mere body of the camera cost 10,000 US dollars. Yes, a cameraphone was better (on that one metric, under ideal conditions). If means if you took a picture of a large audience, lets say a picture of a battalion of soldiers standing in formation at some parade. Took that picture with the best Canon at the time the Canon EOS 1DS Mark X, and attached the best wide-angle 24mm Canon lens, and set the camera on a tripod and used a self-timer (no shaking from the finger of the camera user) and it was a bright sunny day, you get excellent images of the soldiers.

But then if you put right next to that tripod, a second tripod, used the Nokia cameraphone adapter to attach the 808 Pureview to the tripod, and set the self-timer, and took the picture on the cameraphone using just its inbuilt Carl Zeiss wide-angle lens, you would get a rival picture. The Canon 1DS Mark X had Canon’s highest resolution sensor at 18 mp in 2012. The Nokia 808 Pureview had 41mp (which only produces pictures at either 38mp or 34mp. Still, if you now magnify that wide-angle image of 600 men, so that each face is visible - the Nokia picture is twice as sharp as that with the most expensive professional camera Canon had ever made up to that time !!! Yes, the cameraphone is not just catching up to (some) aspects of stand-alone point-and-shoot low-end cameras, and even passing them on some aspects (the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom in 2013 with its 10x optical zoom) but yes, now for example the Nokia/Microsoft Lumia 1020 has that magnificent 41mp sensor on it. If you want to create wall-sized posters of landscapes or very large populations of people, say a stadium shot of the audience - the Lumia 1020 or Nokia 808 Pureview is still today in 2014 literally the best camera to use (under good lighting conditions ie during daylight).

 

Before the cameratrolls hit this blog, yes yes yes, obviously yes, lots of other things matter in addition to pixels. Most of all, the optical quality of the lens. There are things with the sensor size itself - a larger sensor (not pixel count, I mean physical size) allows more light to be collected etc etc etc... yes yes, but if you want DETAIL, then pixel count is paramount. And currently the Nokia-invented Pureview tech (now owned and sold by Microsoft in its Lumia line) is the sharpest consumer camera sold on the planet. And you can get one at a discount bin in many phone stores haha..

 

DATA POINTS FOR OUR MODEL

So lets go back to our problems. We have multiple cameras. Every consumer on the planet who bought a camera (ie it was not a gift or say part of some inheritage) has also bought a mobile phone. By every, ok there will be the oddball weirdo who is resisting against all odds and never bought or used a cellphone.. Fine, that is far FAR less than 1% of the employed adult population. There are MORE people who once bought or used a mobile phone but somehow kicked that habit or abandoned the device, preferring to live in some kind of digital hermit status, say like drug dealer king-pins of the Mafia. Or terrorists or some world leaders like Vladimir Putin (who arranged the precision-killing of the President of Chechnya who was targeted from the air when he was using his mobile phone). But these people have used mobile phones in the past...

 

So yeah. Far more than 99% of those people who can afford to buy a stand-alone camera, already own a mobile phone. Most of those people are ‘affluent’ and will already own a smartphone. They all have had cameras now for many years. And of the non-smatphone but still stand-alone camera owners, most of those phones are also now cameraphones. Of new non-smartphone mobile phones (dumbphones and ‘featurephones’) 79% sold this year 2014 will have a camera on it.

 

Now we have a big problem. We know that somewhere near 100 million stand-alone cameras (at its peak, 120 million) are sold every year but all of those also own a cameraphone, and some are migrating camera behavior from stand-alone cameras to cameraphones. So can we find out which camera is used by whom (as the primary camera).

 

Then we have the issue of multiple device ownership. In mobile phones this is very common, more than half of Europeans who have a mobile phone, have two mobile phones. Over a quarter of Americans with cellphones have two already. What we tend to do, is if we walk around with two phones, we tend to use the camera on the phone that is newer or in some way better. If one pocket has an 8mp iPhone and the other pocket has the Blackberry, we use the iPhone. But then we replace the BB with a new Sony, and now in one pocket we have the iPhone but the other pocket has the 20mp Sony Xperia, now we use the Sony.

 

So with cameraphones, we know its quite common in the Industrialized World for smartphone owners especially to already have two phones in use but then mostly, only use one of those two for its camera (currently). Of course sometimes we may find that the battery is dead on our primary camera and we then use the older phone, or maybe one is special in one way so if you walk around with the Nokia Pureview camera on one pocket and the Samsung Galaxy Zoom (K Zoom or S4 Zoom) in the other pocket, you probably take pictures with both, depending on situational needs. But again, I am not looking at the camera freak here, I am trying to map out the general public. So yeah, maybe 1% or 2% are some kind of hybrid users, most will have a clear preference, I take pictures primarily with ‘this’ phone and that will be so, until maybe the next phone has a better camera on it.

 

That means, that from the cameraphone side, where the vast majority of the device population exists, we have to calculate out the population of ‘second’ cameraphones, the ones we own and often carry, but are not using for its camera (currently). It may have thousands of pictures on it, from last year when it was still our primary camera, but now that we have the newest toy in our pocket that older cameraphone is no longer used (as a camera).

 

So I have used my proprietary model for calculating the multiple device ownership stats, to give a good estimate of the unique cameraphone user number, and then eliminated that number from the total installed base of cameraphones in the wild today. That was the easy part. There is a similar problem on the stand-alone camera side. Some people who buy a digital camera, already own a digital camera, and just find that the old camera is now not good enough, and want to replace it. Some - very few of the total population - actually have a camera collection in use, ie more than one stand-alone camera, but those are semi-pro or pro photographers and their number is less than 1% of the total camera user population. So, we know how many stand-alone cameras are sold annually, but do we know how many are sold as replacement cameras for an older stand-alone (film-based or) digital camera? That would give us the ‘growth metric’ to calculate the installed base of total stand-alone cameras per year. We know that is less than 100 million but how much less.

 

I was able to find one metric reported by The Guardian based on a ‘survey’ but their article did not identify whose survey. It was as far as I could tell, a survey of UK stand-alone camera buyers. The Telegraph said on 29 June 2012 that 39% of new buyers of digital cameras bought their new stand-alone digital camera to replace an existing camera. This is a very valuable data point and I only wish we had more such data from other countries or globally, but it does give us a good reference point.

 

Then we know that stand-alone cameras are being replaced, they used to replace film-based cameras and now also are replacing older digital stand-alone cameras. But as we learned from the O2 survey, four out of ten are not replacing their existing camera at all, as the cameraphone has now become the camera being used. So lets see if we can achieve a ceiling number. We know the new sales of cameras peaked in 2010 so by now we are in the stage where total stand-alone camera population (in use) is in decline globally, not growing. So lets see recent stats of what we have for the ceiling. The Telegraph article gave UK adult ownership of stand-alone digital cameras at 78%. We have a very similar US statistic by the US Consumer Electonics Association from 2011 saying 62% of US adults own a digital camera (and at that time already 72% owned a cellphone). If we use their mid-point as our ‘Industrialized World average’ number we get 70% of adults. Now, obviously, some youth also own cameras but increasingly that is their smartphone. Nonetheless, we can assume this statistic extends to some age below ‘adulthood’ but not far below (mobile phone ownership now goes in advanced markets to children below age 7). So if we say age 16 is the limit, and just for statistical convenience zero percent of teens age 15 and below own a stand-alone camera, and 70% of all age 16 and above... we get total industrialized world stand-alone digital camera ownership estimate at 555 million people over age 16 in the Industrialized World. Then lets add in the rest of stand-alone cameraphone sales which is in the Emerging World. That proportion has been rising but is only about a quarter now (in the Emerging World there is a far higher likelihood of a camera owner only having a smartphone with a ‘good enough’ camera, not a stand-alone camera). So I get a total global digital camera owner number of 610 million.

STAND-ALONE DIGITAL CAMERA DEVICES AND USERS

Now we have some good data we can work with. We know how many new stand-alone digital cameras are sold every year (the cumulative sales is nearly 1.2 Billion digital cameras ever sold by the end of this year 2014). We know that 61% of the new sales of stand-alone cameras go to first-time stand-alone digital camera buyers. And based on that, we can calculate also the period of how many years the current installed base has been building (and a replacement cycle). The current stand-alone digital camera population has been building for 10.5 years. Ten and a half years (not 5 months haha).

We also can now calculate the total installed base of digital cameras still in existence which is 1.05 Billion. And using the same model - obviously its not precise, but we can estimate that the average stand-alone digital camera owner has typically 1.6 stand-alone cameras (which can be digital or film-based). That user obviously more often than not, is not using the other camera but may have several cameras for whatever specialized needs and uses, and may indeed use more than one camera.

 

So there is an ‘ownership base’ of 610 million stand-alone digital camera owners, who own 1.05 Billion digital cameras. All of those 610 million stand-alone digital camera owners also own a mobile phone and practically all of them will now have a cameraphone (often two). So what about migration from digital cameras to cameraphones? A survey by AYTM in 2013 reported that 28% of those who own a stand-alone digital camera, do not use it (anymore, or rarely use it) because they use the camera on the cameraphone. Ah, now we have very good data point to understand.

 

Of 610 million who own a digital camera, 72% use that digital camera as their primary camera. That is 440 million people. They in turn own (in addition to at least one cameraphone) typically 705 million digital cameras (not all in use today).

 

CAMERAPHONE POPULATION AND USERS

 

Then of the cameraphone population. Total cameraphones sold since the first Sharp model sold in Japan at the dawn of the millenium, is 11 Billion. Out of those, 4.8 Billion cameraphones are in use today (at least as mobile phones). When we eliminate multiple device ownership, and I do make the assumption that most who own two phones will own two phones of roughly similar class ie if you are affluent you own two smartphones (not one smartphone and one cheap dumbphone) or if you are poor but have two phones (a rickshaw taxi operator for example) for convenience of your business they will both then be ultra-cheap reliable Nokia basic models... So while this is definitely not always true, it is probably mostly true, that those who own two phones, will have them as roughly similar price-range phones.

 

So lets eliminate multiple devices to find the ownership of cameraphones. Using my consultancy model (I am the oldest expert to report on multiple mobile phone ownership among consumers as I was also literally the first person to discover this bizarre phenomenon when it was first measures in Finland in 1996) I arrive at 4.0 Billion unique cameraphone owners in the world today. Across the planet they own on average 1.2 cameraphones per person or one in five owns two cameraphones.

 

LETS DO VENN DIAGRAM

 

So lets now separate the two and get some meaningful data. So 620 million are current digital stand-alone camera owners but only 440 million of those remain as active users of their digital cameras. Thus 180 million of current owners of stand-alone digital cameras have abandoned that stand-alone digital camera and use the cameraphone instead (28%). Now lets look from the side of cameraphones. 4.0 Billion cameraphone owners are in the world. Every stand-alone digital camera owners also has a cameraphone so they are in this population, but those 440 million prefer using their digital camera. So 3.56 Billion cameraphone owners also use their cameraphone as the primary camera. And obviously 440 million (11%) of cameraphone owners prefer to use a stand-alone digital camera rather than the camera on their mobile phone.

 

So we have serious stats here.. First, new digital camera sales in 2014 (estimate)

 

NEW SALES OF CAMERAS 2014

 

New digital camera sales in 2014 by type

Cameraphones . . . . . . . . . 1.7 billion . . . . . .  95%

Stand-alone cameras . . . . . . . 95 million . . . . . 5%

TOTAL digital cameras . . 1.8 billlion . . . . . 100%

Source: TomiAhonen Phone Book 2014

This data may be freely shared

 

Obviously the cameraphone won the ‘war’ of the cameras, in the past decade and now stand-alone cameras are only a niche product while the mobile phone obviously is the global mass-market gadget.

 

CURRENT INSTALLED BASE OF CAMERAS

 

Installed Base of Digital Cameras 2014

Cameraphones in use as phones . . . . 4.8 B

Cameraphones used as cameras . . . . 3.6 B (75%)
Stand-alone cameras operational . . . 1.0 B

Stand-alone cameras in use . . . . . . . . . 440 M (44%)

TOTAL digital camera population . . 5.8 B

TOTAL cameras in use . . . . . . . . . . . 4.0 B (69%)

Source: TomiAhonen Phone Book 2014

This data may be freely shared

 

Note that 1.2 Billion cameras on mobile phones used today, are NOT used as cameras. That is more than all stand-alone digital cameras ever made - and this number of cameraphones in use today - are in the pockets of their owners and just unused. Thesee are often quite advanced smartphones too with cameras with sensors easily up to ranges of 5mp to 8mp. Most of the cameraphones which are not in use, is not because the owner has a digital camera that is better (although that is a significant minority); the majority is not used because the same user has an even better camera on their other phone!

 

CAMERA USERS

 

Active users of cameras in the world, by type of camera, 2014

Total cameraphone owners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.0 billion

Camera users whose primary camera on phone . . . . .  3.56 billion . . . . . (89%)

Stand-alone camera unique owners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 620 M

Stand-alone camera owners using stand-alone camera . . 440 million . . . (11%)

TOTAL unique camera users globally . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.0 billion . . . . . (100%)

Source: TomiAhonen Phone Book 2014

This data may be freely shared

 

That is the big number we want. 4 Billion total unique camera owners on the planet (all are also mobile phone owners and for practical purposes, I’d say over 99% of those are also cameraphone owners). 56% of the total population alive on the planet now has a digital camera in their pocket 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Wow. This is AFTER we remove multiple device ownership so yes, this is unique users. So recognize, most home electronics stats we get, like TV ownership, etc is measured 'by household'. This is measured 'per capita'. And yes, often we get stats 'of the adult population' but no, this is against 'total population' quite literally of all ages including babies. And yes, 56% of the planet has a camera in their pocket ever day. 4 Billion active camera users on the planet.

 

What kind of cameras? 89% of the people on the planet who have a camera, have it on a mobile phone and do not own a stand-alone camera at all. Only 11% of camera users use a stand-alone digital camera as their primary camera (while all also own a cameraphone and most also own at least one other digital camera). So when I say 9 out of 10 camera users on the planet who take pictures have never used a stand-alone camera, the statistics actually come very close to that rule-of-thumb, as obivously the discrepancy among digital camera ownership skews very strongly for Indistrialized World vs Emerging World. In the Industrialized World 70% of adults (555 million) own a stand-alone digital camera (and 25% of those have quit using it). But in the Emerging World only 55 million own a stand-alone digital camera which is only 1% of the adult population. But even in the Emerging World, approx 75% of the adult population now has a cameraphone.

 

1 TRILLION PICTURES THIS YEAR

 

So then how many pictures do we take? Ah, this is another really interesting item and VERY hard to pin down. We had some early numbers talking of a rough number of 150 pictures per year but nobody has recently quantified it further. Except for one. National Geographic had a study of US digital camera users, including cameraphone users, that found that in year 2011 the average digital camera owner took 255 pictures. They also reported that 37% of the pictures taken were with cameraphones. They did not break down the digital camera universe but we can get that from other sources like the Consumer Electronics Association and using smartphones as the proxy for cameraphones, we get ComScore stats for US smartphone ownership. The USA is a particularly good market still in 2011 as the multiple-phone ownership phenomenon was severely lagging the rest of the Industrialized World and many still used older Blackberries or older iPhones with very modest cameras. So the numbers are ‘relatively pure’ not contaminated by heavy overlap of multiple-device cross-over and cannibalization as they would today..

 

Now we can calculate out the split, how many of the pictures were taken by stand-alone digital cameras, and how many by cameraphones and we get that in 2011: the average digital camera owner took 302 pictures, and the average cameraphone owner took 201 pictures. And better yet, National Geographic also gives us the growth rate - the picture taking grows at a rate of 7.5% annually.

 

I wish we had more data points but we can build a reasonably good model out of this. So allowing growth from 2011 at the same rate for both camera types, we get this level of picture taking per camera user per year:

 

DIGITAL PICTURES TAKEN PER YEAR IN 2014 BY CAMERA TYPE

Stand-alone digital camera user . . . . . 375

Cameraphone camera user . . . . . . . . . 249

Source: TomiAhonen Phone Book 2014

This data may be freely shared

 

Note that as far as I know, this is the only number published in this decade about the variance between stand-alone camera users and cameraphone users, in how many pictures they take per year. Again, this is very VERY rough, and based on old data and using data from several different data sources. But its better than nothing, and I again urge any industry analysts doing market research to please survey the user behavior of cameraphones and give us some reliable survey data of how modern consumers are using their cameras. But now lets see a total measure. Lets multiply pictures taken by cameras in use by type in 2014:

 

PICTURES TAKEN IN 2014 BY CAMERA TYPE

Stand-alone digital cameras actually still in use . . . . . 440 million

Pictures taken by stand-alone camera user per year . . 375

Total pictures taken on stand-alone cameras . . . . . . .  165 billion

Cameraphones used as cameras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.56 billion

Pictures taken by cameraphone users per year . . . . . .  249

Total pictures taken on cameraphones . . . . . . . . . . . .  886 billion

TOTAL PICTURES TAKEN IN 2014 . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.05 Trillion

Source: TomiAhonen Phone Book 2014

This data may be freely shared

 

So 1 Trillion, 1,000 Billion pictures are taken this year. Thats 146 pictures per human being alive per year. And how does that compare against history? 1000Memories estimated in 2011 that humankind has accumulated 3.5 Trillion pictures taken since the birth of the camera 170 years earlier. We also have a data point also for year 2011, Nikon reported that global digital pictures taken that year was 320 Billion. Now assigning a steady growth path to pictures taken from 2011 to 2014, we arrive at a new grand total of pictures taken by humankind by the end of year 2014 at 5.7 Trillion. 1 Trillion of those were shot this year.

 

SANITY CHECKS

 

First, is this number at all reasonable? Well, first sanity check point we have is Yahoo! who recently published their estimate that 880 Billion digital images will be taken this year. That is already pretty close.

 

Then lets go to Facebook. Facebook is the biggest depository of images and was receiving 350 million new pictures daily in 2013. Thats 127 Billion images per year (last year). Now, if we assume that for every picture uploaded to FB, another taken by the same user is not... so that typical Facebook user will only upload half of the total pictures they take (and remember, we will count as pictures taken all that are deleted as for example blurry and fuzzy and of bad light or where we had a bad expression etc) we would have a number of 255 billion photographs taken by Facebook users globally in 2013. And how does FB total user base compare to global digital camera ownership in 2013? Its more than 3 times larger. We can be pretty sure the rest of the world camera owners behave like the Facebook users, in terms of their camera usage, and that gives us a 2013 number of about 810 Billion pictures taken globally. If the total global photograph population grew from 320 Billion in 2011 to 810 Billion in 2013, then definitely it will be more than 1 Trillion today. I know this is very imprecise, but the magnitude is in the right scale. Its not going to be 500 million (is way too low) and its not going to be 2 Trillion (is way too high).

 

We have another rough guidance number. PhoneArena reported that 23% of owners of cameraphones take pictures they intend to upload onto social media. Note, this obviously includes all social media not only Facebook so our Instagrams, Twitters, Flickrs etc.. but again, lets just take the Facebook number. Take 128 billion pictures uploaded to Facebook and multiply by two (assuming half are eliminated by the photographer) so 255 billion. Divide that by 23% and you get 1.1 Trillion pictures - just via Facebook alone. Again the sanity check says we are roughly in the ballpark.

 

One Trillion photographs taken this year 2014 seems like a very robust number quite clearly in the ballpark. It may end up being a bit too conservative and I would dearly love to see more survey data of what we actually do with our digital cameras (like how many pictures are erased and never shown to anyone haha...)

 

But there you go. On one website all the camera and photography stats you want for 2014. Year 2000 cameras were so rare luxury items that less than one in 20 humans owned a camera across the globe. Today 14 years later, the planet has 4 billion camera users which is 56% of the population alive of any age, not just adults and not just in the affluent Industrialized World. This is why we see citizen journalism and why almost any newsworthy event find now photographic evidence, taken often by cameraphones. Because we carry our mobile phones everywhere. And 89% of those camera owners shoot pictures on cameraphones and only 11% of camera owners take pictures on stand-alone digital cameras.

The cameraphone sales are at 1.7 Billion units this year and growing while stand-alone camera sales are at 95 million and declining. The active stand-alone digital camera user snaps on average 375 pictures per year (one per day) and the typical cameraphone owner who uses the camera on the phone, takes on average 249 pictures per year (in other words at the rate of one picture 5 days of every week on average). And the planet reaches the point this year of 1 Trillion pictures taken per year, which brings the cumulative photograph history of humankind to 5.7 Trillion pictures taken (by photographer-humans, ignoring automated traffic cams, surveillance cams, webcams, and all film and video footage that shoots many pictures per second).

 

PLEASE SHARE

 

Anyone who is interested in these numbers or some part of it, please do share these numbers with anyone and in any way. This is very rare insight to how we use digital tech and the camera continues to be a highly beloved part of the mobile (phone) so its of great relevance to our industry. There is very much we can now do with cameraphones such as reading QR codes and accessing Augmented Reality content, in addition to obviously taking the obligatory Selfie... Please do feel free to share any data in this blog and please link to here if you do... Anyone who can write more briefly haha, please do feel free to summarize this blog to your readers (including in any other languages than English, for your readers). You don’t need to ask permission from me this blog is Creative Commons as its always been. Feel free to use as long as you credit the original source.

 

So thats on my mind today on a nice Monday. If you are intersted in mobile phone handset statistics, my TomiAhonen Phone Book 2014 edition is coming out soon, I am still finalizing the various stats to it. If you buy the 2012 edition now before the 2014 edition is out, you will receive both for editions for one same low price of 9.99 Euros. I send you the 2012 edition immediately and the 2014 version when that is released in some weeks from now. The TomiAhonen Phone Book has all the stats you could hope to know about smartphones, dumbphones, brands, operating systems, market shares, camera resolutions, screen sizes, regional data, etc... all in one handy ebook volume. See more here TomiAhonen Phone Book.

Early view to Q2 smartphone market share numbers as we get data in - CORRECTED: Nokia (Microsoft) falls out of Top 10

We do have some clear clarity on the Top 10 smartphones that we can do pretty good preview of what it looks like.

 

UPDATE and Correction !!! - Thank you for comment by HonestAccounting. Motorola has surprised us with a stellar Q2 and shipped 8.6M smartphones. As Nokia was on the bubble at 10th before this, and now Motorola jumps back into the Top 10, that pushes Nokia out. You heard it here first Nokia/Microsoft falls out of the Top 10 first time in its history, the inventor of smartphones doesn't fit into 10 largest smartphone makers.

 

 

We have rare Samsung definite (and almsot precise) numbers. nice. Two of the four analyst houses already gave their numbers and a couple of Chinese makers have given H1 numbers (six months) which allows us to do a good guesstimate of their Q2 numbers. So this is the rough ranking and market share of the Top 10:

 

Samsung definitely number 1, at 74.1M units market share about 25%

 

Apple definitely number 2, at 35.2M units market share about 11%

 

Battle for third place is between Lenovo (we don't know yet and Huwaei)

 

Next is then Huawei at 3 or 4, with 15.6M units and about 5%

 

Then fourth or fifth depending on Lenovo is LG with 14.5M units and 5% market share

 

That is the top 5, Lenovo is almost definitely in the Top 5. Note, after the Motorola acquisition is completed, Lenovo leaps easily to number 3

 

Sixth place we have a fight between three Chinese brands: Xiaomi, ZTE and Coolpad. Any one could be sixth, seventh or eighth.

 

Xiaomi we know is 11.7M units and about 4% market share

 

Ninth is Sony at 8.8M units and about 3% market share

 

 

Tenth is Motorola (Google) at 8.6 M units and about 3% market share. Note Moto is in the process of being acquired by Lenovo

 

 

 

Tenth we know is Microsoft-Nokia at 7.7M units and under 3% market share

 

(HTC did not return back into the Top 10, they are under this number, and the other up-and-comings from China and India are not yet big enough to challenge for a Top 10 slot. Blackberry is nowhere even in the Top 12, they may fall out of Top 20 haha)

 

Total market roughly 295M units smartphones in Q2 up about 2% from Q1

 

In the OS wars its 85% Android, 11% iPhone and who cares about the last 4% haha...

 

Thats for you at this stage, I will give full Q2 results when the remaining data is available or can be estimated...