So How Accurate Is This Blog? Duelling statistics: IDC releases 2 regional market smartphone stats Top 5 for China and Western Europe (cool)

This is a rare treat. While the big analyst houses collect very detailed handset data the world over, and sell that in very expensive market studies, occasionally we do get a rare glimpse into some region. Well, we have Christmas in February. IDC has released latest regional data for two of the biggest smartphone markets, China and Western Europe. And rather than just quarterly data, they have given full year 2014 data for both markets. This is awesome and very rare insights.

Now most of you on this blog are regular readers (nice to see you back, thanks for visiing this blog, we've had over 5 million visits in the 10 years the CDB blog has been live) and know that last week I published my annual big collection of smartphone market share data. The data of the mobile industry released on this blog has been the largest collection of free data by any source on the web, from mobile subscriptions to mobile data usage to handset sales. I've been publishing a Top 10 'horse race' for each of the big brands in smartphones ever since I predicted a 'bloodbath' was about to begin in smartphones (year 2010). And I have also been publishing the installed base of the global smartphone user base. Data to that level (Top 10 brands) and that detail (installed base) is not available anywhere else, consistently and free.

We get rare chances to validate the data on this blog but whenever we do, I publish that info eagerly. I am very confident that my model is solid and based on enough data points to give a good overall view while I don't have staff to do individual studies of various markets. I mostly base on my inputs on the various published sources of relevant data, have acquired a pretty good gut feel for the reliablity of each data provider, and as my model is a comprehensive global model, I can always do the 'top down' checks and balances, to see that Apple's individual market shares in the various regions do not amount to more than Apple's total sales were globally, etc.  So there is a lot of that 'sanity check' analysis also going into my model. My Consultancy does modest market analysis itself but I also have access to a lot of proprietary mobile industry data from various companies through a long association with many of the big analyst houses and of course my broad base of industry giants as clients. And I work with many industry associations who have often data they collect. But in the end, my forecast is based on my model, not a comprehensive global survey of market data by a team of researchers. its a model. I estimate the market to my best ability. 

Well, the big picture is fairly well accepted and there are no big controversies on the big numbers and this blog and my consultancy has become highly respected (as the most accurate forecaster of the mobile industry..) But what about the level of detail. Now we have a rare chance to examine exactly how solid is Tomi's model? A week ago I expanded the depth of the detail I published in my big annual review, to include a regional split of the Top 5 brand market shares in China, the biggest market, Western Europe second biggest region, North America third, and then the rest of the world grouped into the 'Rest of World' region. As I wrote, it was a rough estimate with clearly spelled 'approximate' sizes within each region. But this is the deepest level of data I have published into the public domain - and nobody else has given a regional breakdown of the Top 5 brands like this in the industry for any year so far. That I thought was very valuable data for my readers and I wanted to share it, even where I felt this was at the extreme of the detail I dared to commit to haha...

Now only days after I published that, we have IDC releaseing their Top 5 ranking of China 2014 smartphone market AND also a Top 5 ranking of Western Europe also for full year 2014. It is incredibly valuable not only because IDC is one of the big 3 most reliable smartphone analyst houses, but because the data is from the same source and the same period. Very rare and very good comparison point. (Thank you IDC for releasing this detail of info, you are a credit to the industry). Lets do duelling statistics. China first:

CHINA TOP 5 SMARTPHONE BRANDS 2014 COMPARING TOMI AHONEN VS IDC STATS

TOMI AHONEN . . . . . . . . . . .IDC
1 Xiaomi 14% . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Xiaomi 13% 
2 Samsung 13% . . . . . . . . . .  2 Samsung 12%
3T Huawei 12% . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Lenovo 11%
3T Coolpad 12% . . . . . . . . . . .4 Huawei 10%
5 Lenovo 11% . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Coolpad 9%
Total 415 Million . . . . . . . . . . .Total 421 Million
Sources: TomiAhonen Consulting at Communities Dominate blog 13 Feb 2015 and IDC Asia/Pacific Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker February 17, 2015 published at The Street

IDC is definitely more reliable as a source for China smartphone stats than I am haha. So lets see how well I guessed. I called each of the Top 5 brands correctly (and note the big 'catch' here is that Apple is not in the Top 5 even as we heard all the silly sensationalist press stories in the past months how Apple somehow now rules China). I also called the Top 2 positions of the table correctly. For the 'biggest difference' ie Lenovo, I had their rank off by 2 ranks (5 rather than 3) but I still had their market share accurately at 11%. Then I had Huawei and Coolpad tied, IDC gives the the nod to Huawei. On one brand I hit the market share exactly and on two of the five I was off only on one point of market share! On the last two I was off only by two points of market share. On the total market size I was below but off by only 1.4%. This is a darn, DARN good guess for someone who doesn't have his own analyst team on the ground in China to count the market size.... And you can see, my percentages are slightly above IDC's because I counted a slightly smaller total market size. My (slghtest) error is also consistent. Then lets do Europe

WESTERN EUROPE TOP 5 SMARTPHONE BRANDS 2014 COMPARING TOMI AHONEN VS IDC STATS

TOMI AHONEN . . . . . . . . . . .IDC
1 Samsung 30% . . . . . . . . . . 1 Samsung 35%
2 Apple 28% . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Apple 21%
3 Sony 11% . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Sony 10%
4 Microsoft/Nokia 8% . . . . . . 4 Microsoft/Nokia 7%
5 LG 5% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 LG 6%
Total 155 Million . . . . . . . . . . Total 146 Million
Sources: TomiAhonen Consulting at Communities Dominate blog 13 Feb 2015 and IDC European Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker February 17, 2015 published at IDC website

Again we can accept IDC is the master here, they know the facts on the ground and I only tried to guess the numbers. So lets see how close I came. Now I nailed not only each of the Top 5 brands but I nailed EACH ranking position exactly. Samsung first. Check. Apple second. Check. Sony ahead of Microsoft/Nokia. Check. LG fifth. Check. Wow. That is spooky accurate! And on the total market I was this time above IDC's number but how massive was my 'error' - 1.6%. That my friends, is near perfection. Now, yes, the market share percentage differences are bigger for Samsung and Apple, I had the race far tighter between Samsung and Apple for Europe, with only a 2 point spread while IDC measures a sizeable 14 point spread in favor of Samsung. Part of the variations on this 'region' is of course on how much we count into the exact definition of Western Europe which also helps explain why my Europe is bigger than their Europe haha. But yeah, after the top 2, I am then within a percent on the remaining top 5 ranks, one point too high for Sony and Microsoft/Nokia, and one point too low for LG.

I was the first out with this data, I provided far more detail than IDC, as I gave data on four regions not two. And my data for China and IDC had the total market size nailed with less than 2% error of the actual, while picking each of the Top 5 brands in both regions accurately. I even had the exact rankings in seven of the ten cases - that is uncanny - and had the Top 2 accurate rankings for both markets. Even on the exact market share percentages I was within one point - one POINT of accuracy for six of the ten brands. Wow is this blog of value to understand the global market in mobile?

With that, we have a very VERY accurate estimate of two of the four regions in how I divided the world, China and Western Europe which accounted for 46% (either IDC's or my math) of the total planet's smartphone sales. With the US stats we have rather solid Kantar and ComScore numbers and obviously my regional analysis of the US market is totally consistent with those. That means by simple subtraction math, the 'Rest of the World' region analysis is also very close to the mark. So for those who want to see those again, from my blog a week ago:

TOP 5 NORTH AMERICAN SMARTPHONES 2014
1 . . . Apple . . . . . . . . . . approx 67 M . . . . . 49% market share
2 . . . Samsung . . . . . . . approx 31 M . . . . . 23% market share
3 . . . LG . . . . . . . . . . . .  approx 11 M . . . . . . 8% market share
4T . . HTC . . . . . . . . . . . .approx   7 M . . . . . . 5% market share
4T . . Lenovo/Motorola . . approx   7 M . . . . . . 5% market share
Total Market 135 M smartphones 2014 (10% of global market)
Source TomiAhonen Almanac 2015
This data may be freely used and repeated

TOP 5 REST OF WORLD SMARTPHONES 2014
1 . . . Samsung . . . . . . . .approx 183 M . . . . . 31% market share
2 . . . Lenovo/Motorola . . approx   43 M . . . . . . 7% market share
3 . . . LG . . . . . . . . . . . . . approx   41 M . . . . . . 7% market share
4 . . . Apple . . . . . . . . . . . approx   38 M . . . . . . 6% market share
5 . . . Huawei . . . . . . . . .  approx   25 M . . . . . . 4% market share
Total market 595 M smartphones 2014 (46% of global market)
Source TomiAhonen Almanac 2015
This data may be freely used and repeated

So yeah, I am very happy to see such rich detailed data from two regions published by the same global source at the same time for the same period, as IDC just did this week. Wonderful to have that concrete measured data. But was my blog useful to my readers? You got a very good guess a week earlier, and you got more regions covered using that same methodology which is this accurate haha... 

And now the obligatory plug: If you need more info on the handset market at a trivial 9.99 Euro cost, go order the TomiAhonen Phone Book 2014

Comments

[Wayne Borean]

Close as I'm horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.

Seriously though, that was Damned good estimating. When I was still working sales, I'd run estimates of the market as a whole, and of the various target customers in that market. If I was within 10% I was pretty happy. One customer I estimated at 2,200 units per year, turned out they were 3,000 units per year. Close enough, and it was a nice bit of business when I took them away from the competition.

For that sort of estimation I used Securities and Exchange Commission filings, which worked pretty well since most of my targets were North American only. For those outside North America, well, coming up with a good estimate was witchcraft.

[abdul muis]

@Tomi,

I'm very curious about some fact/statement made by other fellow reader on numerous occasion. I think it was baron or leebase that repeatedly said that Apple sold the MOST 4G phone in China. Is that statement/data right?

Thank you.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Wayne and abdul

Wayne - haha yeah, I remember those (SEC filings), done some of that analysis too back in the day. And the lucky windfall if you estimated a market for 2.2K and that was apparently a good number, then the real market was 3K, that is awesome good luck. i hope you had some bonus windfall from the extra sales haha...

But witchcraft, what a good metaphor. When we - Nokia's 3G Consulting Department that I ran - had to pitch stories to the press about why the 3G future would become real - this was when many rival experts were peddling stories as far apart as WiFi is from satellite data services - we had almost no data and we had to build very accurate models of mobile industry 'outside' the mobile data side, into which we then plugged the very rare SMS and WAP and iMode type of early mobile data points, to get some insights. Then it helped that Nokia was the richest company in mobile, we could also afford to run actual consumer surveys across a dozen countries and over 50,000 consumers over several years, asking them about their mobile habits and desires haha.. The econometric model was called MDF and it used parts of Nokia's network cellular dimensioning engine on its foundation (ie you needed to be a cellular telecoms engineer even to understand how it worked) and it was the most sophisticated econometric model of the telecoms indsutry that many other consultancies, regulators and telecoms operators used to calibrate their own models of far less complexity. Still we had no real data about consumption that couldn't be collected because that 3G world had not yet been built. Turns out our models and forecasts were remarkably good and I've kind of ridden that reputation ever since haha and had plenty of those insights built into my far simpler econometric model of the global mobile industry. The Nokia MDF tool was a multidimensional spreadsheet that literally needed two 'drivers' (highly trained statisticians and network engineers) just to generate a result. That was from tons of inputs and several days of model generation by the two operator-team per 3G model created per customer per scenario. Then there were several derivative tools from that work including Nokia's Arbitrave/Equilibrium telecoms competition simulator/training tool etc.. Ah, those were the days...

abdul - yeah I've heard those claims but haven't seen enough data that I'd trust to validate it, if I did, you know I'd be posting the info and the source. It may be true but we don't know. Its more likely to be true only for Q4 than the full year but really, I don't know.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Wayne Borean]

Heh. I may be disabled now, but I can still read. I do SEC report evaluations for articles. Most people don't know about the SEC reports, and even fewer can read one without going sleep!

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