Communities Dominate Brands

Smartphone Bloodbath Q3 full results Top 10 brands, OS platforms and installed base (corrected - and updated)

Ok time to do the same-ole, same-ole chart. Samsung and Android rule smartphones. Here are the latest quarterly numbers. Note that as Gartner clearly has ended its reporting of the smartphone market size, I am reduced to using 3 data points for the total market (Strategy Analytics, IDC and Canalys) but this quarter Canalys went squirrely on us, giving only a very vague indication of the market size. Their PR says its over 300 million and that its up 23% from the same period last year. So I used 313 million as the Canalys number. That gives us a total size based on the average of the 3 analyst houses as 320.4 million smartphones sold in Q3 of 2014 which is up 8% from Q2. If you need the previous quarter, the data is here.

BIGGEST SMARTPHONE MANUFACTURERS BY UNIT SALES IN Q3 2014

Rank . . Manufacturer . Units . . . Market Share . Was Q2 2014 . . OS systems supported (coming)
1 (1) . . Samsung . . . .  78.5 M . . 24.5% . . . . . . . ( 24.9% ) . . . . . . Android, Windows (Tizen)
2 (2) . . Apple  . . . . . . . 39.3 M . . 12.3% . . . . . . . ( 11.8% ) . . . . . . iOS
3 (5) . . Xiaomi . . . . . . .18.0 M . . . 5.6% . . . . . . .  (   5.1% ) . . . . . . Android
4 (3) . . Lenovo  . . . . . . 17.0 M . . . 5.3% . . . . . . . (   5.2% ) . . . . . . Android (Tizen)
5T (4) . . Huawei  . . . . . 16.8 M . . . 5.2% . . . . . . . (   5.2% ) . . . . . . Android (Tizen)
5T (6) . . LG  . . . . . . . .  . 16.8 M . . . 5.2% . . . . . . . (   4.9% ) . . . . . . Android
7 ( - ) . TCL/Alcatel . . . . 12.7 M . . . 4.0% . . . . . . . (  - - -  ) . . . . . . . Android
8 (7) . . Coolpad/Yulong  12.5 M . . . 3.9% . . . . . . . (   4.0% ) . . . . . . Android
9 (8) . . ZTE  . . . . . . . . . . 11.0 M . . . 3.4% . . . . . . . (   3.5% ) . . . . . . Android, Firefox, Windows
10 (9) . Sony . . . . . . . . . . . 9.9 M . . . 3.1% . . . . . . . (   3.0% ) . . . . . . Android
Others . . . . . . . . . . . .  87.9 M
TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . .  320.4 M
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 7 November 2014, based on manufacturer and industry data
This table may be freely shared

So yeah Samsung is tops as usual and Apple safely in second place. The fast climber has been Xiaomi who takes temporary 3rd ranking for this quarter but next quarter we will have Lenovo reporting also its new Motorola unit smartphone sales and when they are added, it moves into solid third ranking with about 8% market share. Huawei and LG are now tied for 5th rank. Motorola's brief return into the Top 10 ended after only one quarter, as TCL/Alcatel returns to the Top 10 after a long delay showing now strong growth in their smartphone business. Of the big brands that used to rule this chart we've seen the falls of Blackberry, HTC, Palm and Nokia(Microsoft) and now Sony is on the brink as well. Its been a true bloodbath the past couple of years..

BIGGEST SMARTPHONE OPERATING SYSTEMS BY UNIT SALES IN Q3 OF 2014

Rank . OS Platform . . . . Units . . . . Market share . Was Q2 2014 . . Manufacturers in Top 10
1 (1) . . Android . . . . . . . 268.0 M . .  83.6 % . . . . . ( 85.1 %) . . . . . Samsung, Huawei, Lenovo, LG, ZTE, TCL/Alcatel, Sony, Yulong/Coolpad, Xiaomi
2 (2) . . iOS  . . . . . . . . . . . 39.3 M . .  12.3 % . . . . . ( 11.8 %)  . . . . . Apple
3 (3) . . Windows Phone . 10.4 M . . .  3.2 % . . . . . (  2.5 %) . . . . . . Samsung, ZTE
4 (4) . . Blackberry . . . . . . . 2.1 M . . .  0.7 % . . . . . (  0.5 %) . . . . . . (None)
others . . . . . . .. .  . . . . . . . . . 0.7 M . . .  0.2 % . . . . . (   0.1 %)
TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  320.4 M
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 7 November 2014, based on manufacturer and industry data
This table may be freely shared

So yeah no change here. Its a two-horse race that Android is totally dominating. Now for the next quarter expect the traditional 'first full quarter of new iPhone model sales surge' but then it again settles down. On an annual basis Android OS outsells iPhones by more than 5 to 1. Windows is dead. Blackberry is now a miniscule niche. None of the new OS platforms has yet caught on fire or behaved like a fox.

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

Rank . OS Platform . . . . Units . . . Market share  Was Q2 2014 . Main Manufacturers of current base
1 . . . . Android . . . . . . 1,455 M . . . 74 % . . . . . . ( 72 %) . . . . . . Samsung, Huawei, Sony, Lenovo, ZTE, LG, Coolpad, HTC, Xiaomi, Motorola/Google
2 . . . . iOS  . . . . . . . . . . 373 M . . . 19 % . . . . . . ( 19 %) . . . . . . Apple
5 . . . . Windows Phone . 44 M . . . . 2 % . . . . . . (   2 %) . . . . . . Nokia/Microsoft, Samsung, HTC
4 . . . . Blackberry  . . . . . 38 M . . . . 2 % . . . . . . (   2 %) . . . . . . Blackberry
3 . . . . Symbian . . . . . .   27 M . . .  . 1 % . . . . . . (   2 %) . . . . . . Nokia
Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8 M . . . .  0 %
TOTAL Installed Base . 1,966 M smartphones in use at end of Q3, 2014
Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 7 November 2014, based on manufacturer and industry data
This table may be freely shared
NOTE: the above chart reflects update bombshell Microsoft news that only 50M Lumia handsets have been activated out of 76M shipped, so Windows Phone market share real installed base had been over-estimated by about 1/3

Yeah, nothing new here either. Android keeps growing, iOS has a higher market share in installed base than new sales primarily as iPhones have a far longer use often being passed down than most smartphones but still Android installed base is well more than 3 times larger than iOS. Last Symbian devices are retiring or just wearing out. Blackberry and Windows have tiny slices that can't sustain any mass market apps businesses so their only hope is to focus on the enterprise-side. The total smartphones in use is now so near 2 Billion we can round it off to 2.0B. That is up 6% from Q2. By year-end it will be 2.1B smartphones in use worldwide.

(This blog was corrected on 9 November based on TCL latest numbers that came out on 7 November and showed particularly strong growth in their smartphone business. Earlier version of this blog had MIcrosoft-Nokia returning to the bottom rung of the Top 10 but now in this corrected version TCL/Alcatel returned instead and Microsoft-Nokia remains outside the Top 10)

Obviously my forecast was totally wrong on US Midterms. What happened to Democrats?GOTV sy

I've landed in Johannesburg where I've got a morning event with the MMA and IAB tomorrow. I have seen the news now (was on the plane obviously when the election results were coming in). I had predicted Democrats to beat the polls and keep the Senate by 52 to 48, and to pick up House seats and Governorships. I was clearly wrong. The vote counting is not done but Republicans have taken at least 52 seats (can take as many as 54) and taken House and Governor wins as well. I was totally wrong.

The results are pretty close to what the average of last polling was as reported by Real Clear Politics. The reason I went against those polls over a week ago when I made my forecast, was that I trusted 'Narwhal' and its evolution, the Get-Out-the-Vote machine that the Obama campaign built to the 2012 Presidential elections. It was worth 2.9 points in the 2012 election. Now the Democrats had been migrating that system to the midterm elections and spent 60 million dollars more on top of the 100 million Obama campaign spent two years ago.

What happened? I see three equally possible outcomes, and I hope to find out the answer in the coming weeks and months. First, its possible the system worked for Obama but doesn't 'translate' to other politicians. If so, it was a 'one-off' that will go into history books not unlike the Concorde airplane.

Or it could be that the Republicans have neutralized it with their own Get-Out-The-Vote projects and programs. You would expect a competitive world to soon figure out such 'technical' advantages one side may have, and over time they should even out. Ying and Yang.

Or thirdly, it could be that the pollsters had learned to incorporate the strong Democratic advantage in GOTV and had factored it already into their models. In that case the election should have been a far bigger drubbing but the GOTV clawed back some - but not anywhere near enough - of the difference. A bit like how Romney's system in 2012 did gain Republican voters over what McCain had achieved (and won two states McCain lost) but still that was not good enough.

So yeah. My bad. I called it wrong. Now I'd like to dig into it and find out what happened to what the Democrats did believe was a game-changer system. I'll return to this topic when I find out more details. And don't worry, I won't turn the CDB blog into a political analysis blog (haha, I also obviously have little credibiilty now)... We'll continue to do tech/mobile stories mostly on the blog. BUT PS, the Hillary wins in 2016 posting is still valid, except for the Narwhal part. So if you want an update, lets say she wins by 'about or almost' double digits now, after we see Narwhal's relative weakness exposed.