Hey Tizen Second Smartphone Released (Finally) also Pepsi and some Business phone stats

A few tidbits from the smartphone wars. Samsung finally got its Tizen based Z3 out to the market, releasing it in India. About US $130 will get you a 5 inch smartphone with 8mp camera, so superficially its similar to last year's iPhone 6 (but without the apps). Lets see where else it is released and if more models are coming.

And if you thought 1,000 phone manufacturer brands selling 2,500 models of phones was not enough, we have yet another new entrant to the smartphone wars: Pepsi. Not for most of us, but they will launch phones and accessories in China next year, on Android of course.

Then for those who love stats, Strategy Analytics has some rare business phone stats (and also tablet) for Q2. They find 30 million employee smartphones and 59 million BYOD smartphones sold in Q2.  Of the OS split they find Android at 65%, iOS at 28% and Windows at 6% (which leaves 1% for Blackberry). Note how this differs dramatically from all the nonsense that iOS is winning the enterprise phone wars, exactly as I've said. It went to Android when Blackberry and Symbian fell out of it. Not iOS. But yes, the marketing and advertising departments plus many media industries do prefer iPhones. Thats most of the share.. no revolution here for iPhone either, it is Android all the way. Now we have the numbers. Check out Strategy Analytics here. (and who told you...)

More news as it comes.

Comments

[Kevin P]

Pepsi licensed their brand to a small Chinese manufacturer, they're not opening their own mobile phone division. I can't see it going anywhere, specs are identical to last year's Xiaomi Note (same cpu, ram, storage, screen size+resolution, camera etc), combined with a higher price than the more recent Xiaomi Note 2 and much less reputation in the phone/electronics area

[Lullz]

Who exactly has been saying iOS has been wining on the corporate side? Then again I must say 26% for iOS sounds huge and Apple is obviously doing a very good job there.

The Z3 sounds like an interesting device but I have trouble understanding why it could sell in volumes globally. Maybe it will see some reasonable sales in India. The Z3 has lots in common with iPhone 6 but it's also very different from it. There is no fingerprint reader and the user is mostly limited for memory card use as there is no model with enough internal flash memory. I wasn't able to find review about the 8MP camera. In conclusion it's like you said. It's superficially like iPhone 6 but not the same with the details.

[gonzo]

The tizen phone ... will it help?

Morgan Stanley's survey data for smartphone purchase intentions in China.
As you can see, purchase intentions for Samsung in China have gone from 37% in 2013 to 24% in 2014 to just 15% this year. That’s obviously a very worrisome trend in the world’s largest consumer market and it’s a big reason why Samsung’s smartphone profits are way down. Samsung will actually post a year-over-year decline in smartphone sales for the first time ever this year.

“Samsung has lost much of its shares in the low-end to mid-range markets to Chinese competitors,”

But we have been saying it, the race to the bottom only makes great losers to be great market share holders... whomever says ... well It's just in china ...bla bla bla must be delusional ... Samsung is entering a difficult period in handsets

[gonzo]

@Tomi

@Tomi

Here are the exact numbers

Android was the dominant mobile operating system for both smartphones and tablets in Q2, accounting for 65% and 52% of each respective market.

Apple iOS devices accounted for 28% of business smartphone shipments and 38% of tablet shipments.

Microsoft accounted for 6% of the business smartphones shipments in Q2 and 10% of tablets

https://www.strategyanalytics.com/strategy-analytics/news/strategy-analytics-press-releases/strategy-analytics-press-release/2015/10/13/mixed-results-for-business-smartphone-tablet-shipments-in-q2-2015#.Vh9m_7QQmV4

[chithanh]

Gonzo,

The big reason why Samsung profits are dropping was given by Tomi already, namely that they tried to imitate the iPhone and gave up replaceable battery, water-proofing and microSD in the S6.
So no, the Tizen phone will not help the profits, because it does not address the high end market, and because many S5 customers are probably gone for good.

But you are delusional if you think that the race to the bottom makes only losers. The business will go from Samsung to other (mostly Chinese) Android vendors, so those are the winners. Also the customers are the winners: they get excellent phones at unbeatable prices.

[Tester]

... and for Samsung's losses in the low end, it seems that their mismanagement is finally coming back to haunt them.

Frankly, it was inevitable that this happened. Samsung has been criticized for years for their sub-par TouchWiz UI, but they were able to push it by sheer market dominance.

Now that viable alternatives enter the market, people will happily leave this crap behind.

So Samsung has failed both in high end and low end to provide a compelling product. The only thing left to them is that the Chinese competitors are not ready to enter the global market. To be honest, I do not see a bright future ahead for Samsung. They have lost touch with their customers' needs, their decision making process appears to be unsuitable for a fast moving market, and other, more agile competitors are about to enter the smartphone market - and in time people will realize that their product may be better.

So Samsung needs something to make their product stand out. And that's not an iClone, that's also not low end phones running on lower specs (and a worse UI) than the competition - and it's most certainly not a phone that isolates itself by an incompatible operating system - in fact that's the one point where 'standing out' is a death sentence.

As for Apple having a higher market share in the business segment, that's not really surprising, as this market segment has different demographics that the general public, so it will gravitate more towards high end phones. And since Apple does not offer any low end or mid range phones their market share in the relevant segment is inevitably higher.

I must confess, though, that the number is considerably lower than I would have expected. 40% would have sounded reasonable to me. So there's clearly no reason to bring out the champagne and celebrate.

[Kevin P]

Correction to my comment above: of course I meant Xiaomi's lower-end Hongmi Note, not the Xiaomi Note (there is no Xiaomi Note 2 yet)

[Catriona]

26% of enterprise is twice Apple's overall smartphone market share. That sounds very impressive. "Winning" doesn't always mean the largest market share. VW has the largest market share in the world. Would you say they are "winning"?

[gonzo]

@Catriona
26% of enterprise ....

If it matters, I think Tomi had a typing mistake, the report which I linked give the following figures, not the one he wrote.

Apple iOS devices accounted for 28% of business smartphone shipments and 38% of tablet shipments.

One company has 28% and 38% of enterprise. Astonishing their computers and mobile computers are also growing
in the same space.

[Catriona]

@Gonzo, add the news from IBM that only 5% of their users on Macs call IT while 40% of their PC users do, and that they have only 24 people supporting 120,000 iOS and OS X devices company-wide, and we could see that enterprise number rise even higher.

[Tester]

@Catriona:

I don't think those IBM statistics tell anything. It's a natural result of (due to their higher price) Macs being predominantly used in areas where computers are being used creatively - by users who know their way around a computer, but not, for example, in accounting where the users are mostly computer-illiterate and need help for every tiny problem. Of course this adds up. A secretary or an accountant is far more likely to call support than a programmer or graphics designer.

Funny how the iCrowd is misinterpreting any number that comes along.

@Wayne Brady:

"What you HAVEN'T established with this one data point is Apple's absolute dominance in the premium smartphone segment. One MIGHT tend to think "enterprise phones" with "premium", but not when 2/3rd of the included businesses don't actually pay for the phones."

Yes, yes. Apple dominates here because the competition chose - well - not to compete anymore. Just have a look at Samsung's latest offering: Just a slavish copy of an iPhone - completely uncompelling to people who want something different. Also, if Apple is alone in this market segment - and that will inevitably happen if the competition continues to stumble, there will inevitably be some pressure to lower prices. Apple can sell at this profit margin as long as there IS some competition in the same price range. Once there isn't anymore they'll inevitably be accused of customer rip-off.

That the premium smartphone segment is vastly overpriced is not an opinion, it's a fact.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi all

Gonzo - yeah, my typo. Thanks for spotting it, I corrected it now.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Wayne Borean]

The Premium Smartphone segment is overpriced? Well, the Android part of it is. You can tell because sales of Premium Android devices is low. Apple on the other Han dis selling lots.

Of course we don't know how many more phones Apple could sell if they dropped their prices by $100.00 across the board...

Problem is, if they did that, Foxconn could never keep up with the demand.

[Catriona]

@Tester, IBM lets employees choose between Macs or Windows. Macs have become so popular they expanded the program to the entire company. So they are getting administrative assistants,etc using Macs. For that matter, in the US just about anyone can afford an iPhone, sophisticated or not. Look around.

[Tester]

@Catriona:

" For that matter, in the US just about anyone can afford an iPhone, sophisticated or not. Look around."

This is a) just plain wrong, and b) bullshit.
a) There's lots of people in the US that do not have enough money to buy a luxury item. If you think different I choose to call you an ignorant.
b) It's not about being able to 'afford' but being willing to spend.

"IBM lets employees choose between Macs or Windows. "

It wouldn't change anything anyway because those who call suzpport would never choose to switch to a system they are unfamiliar with. They sit it out with what they know and call support for any tiny problem they encounter. And those who switch to a Mac will be those who do have some knowledge.

You are still drawing the wrong conclusion from these numbers. There is no inherent support friendliness to be found here. Once you get all these computer-illiterates on, the numbers will inevitably change. What do you think why Microsoft rules the office market? It's just because those working with it would need a retraining course to switch to a different package, which in the end would cost more than the savings from not having to purchase MSOffice anymore. And THAT'S the people calling support.

@Wayne Borean:

No. Apple is just ripping up its stupid cult followers. Doesn't change anything about the fact that their hardware is horrendously overpriced.
The Android crowd has already realized - or it demands premium features for premium price - something the current Galaxy and Note are sorely missing.
That said, I do not expect the dedicated Apple customer (that'd be the ones posting here or trolling other discussion boards) to realize how they get cheated. But I DO expect the common user, for whom an iPhone's TCO wasn't really that much higher than for an Android phone so far, to eventually notice that they are geting ripped off.

[Catriona]

@Tester, if you work at IBM, you can probably afford an iPhone.

[abdul muis]

@Catriona

You're logic flaw is
CAN AFFORD iphone... MUST BUY iphone

Many of us CAN AFFORD iphone, CAN AFFORD BMW/Mercedes
But NOT buy iPhone.

Reason,
iPhone is not Jesus Phone.
iPhone is NOT a must have
iPhone is NOT the best phone (for me)

[Lullz]

@Tester

"That said, I do not expect the dedicated Apple customer (that'd be the ones posting here or trolling other discussion boards) to realize how they get cheated."

In case you are referring to me you are probably overestimating your skills about being able to understand the value of a product. Today iPhone is clearly the best and most interesting phone I could get. You may think I'm cheated but at the same time there is no single better phone I could pick.

It's that simple and you have great trouble understanding this.

[Tester]

@Lullz:

"In case you are referring to me you are probably overestimating your skills about being able to understand the value of a product. Today iPhone is clearly the best and most interesting phone I could get. "

Let's see:

I can't change the battery.
I can't put in a memory extension.
I have to put it into protective casing so that it won't get scratched.
I can't access it without installing dedicated software on my computer.
I cannot just copy data on it and JUST use it.
I cannot charge it with a common USB cable, but have to buy an overpriced separate cable for it, despite having 5 USB cables lying around that came with different stuff I bought.

Yeah, right, it's clearly the best phone. Get out of your iHole. Even my €200 Android phone is more comfortable to use than anything Apple makes. Because - you know: It JUST works!

[Lullz]

@Tester

"Yeah, right, it's clearly the best phone. Get out of your iHole. Even my €200 Android phone is more comfortable to use than anything Apple makes"

Are you slow or something?

That Android phone may be comfortable for you. Obviously you have serious trouble understanding what I'm saying.

I don't like how Android works. It's simply uncomfortable. When I use iOS that's much more comfortable. I like the iOS user experience and dislike the one Android gives me.

You simply can't understand even while it should be really easy to understand.