Largest Computer Makers when Smartphones and Tablets are Included

I just formally launched the TomiAhonen Almanac 2015 edition yesterday on this blog. One of the popular charts thats been in the Almanac is the counting of the world's largest computer manufacturers, when the legacy computers like mainframes and PCs, are added together with smartphones and tablets. This is becoming the way the industry is measured, but my consultancy was the first to publish this way of counting the computer industry and we've put that chart on this blog every year. Here is last year's chart. But its time to do the new chart. So for the largest computer manufacturers in the world, for total annual computer sales volume, at the end of 2014, when all types of computers are added to the count, this is the chart for 2015:

LARGEST COMPUTER MAKERS WHEN SMARTPHONES & TABLETS INCLUDED
Rank (was) . . Brand . . . . . . Units 2014 . . Market Share 2014 (was 2013)
1 (1) . . . . . . . Samsung . . . 354 M . . . . . 20% (24%)
2 (2) . . . . . . . Apple . . . . . . 282 M . . . . . 16% (18%)
3 (3) . . . . . . . Lenovo . . . . . 131 M . . . . . . 8% (8%)
4 (4)  . . . . . . Huawei . . . . . . 75 M . . . . . . 4% (4%)
5 ( - ) . . . . . . Xiaomi  . . . . . . 61 M . . . . . . 4% ( - )
6 (5) . . . . . . . HP  . . . . . . . . . 56 M . . . . . . 3% (3%)
7 (6) . . . . . . . LG. . . . . . . . . . 49 M . . . . . . 3% (3%)
8 (8) . . . . . . . ZTE . . . . . . . . . 46 M . . . . . . 3% (3%)
9 (10) . . . . . . Coolpad  . . . . . 45 M . . . . . . 2% (2%)
10 tie (9) . . . . Dell . . . . . . . . . 41 M . . . . . . 2% (3%)
10 tie ( - ) . . . TCL/Alcatel . . . 41 M . . . .  . . 2% ( - )
 . . . . . . . . . .  Others . . . . . . 549 M  . . . . . 32% (29%)
TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,740 M
Source: TomiAhonen Almanac 2015 from company and industry data, December 2015
This data and this table may be freely shared

So Sony drops out as it sold its Vaio business and the smartphone business has been struggling. New chart entrants Xiaomi and TCL from China are powered only by smartphone sales. Traditional PC giants, Dell and HP keep dropping down on the charts as they are not participating in the fastest growing side of the computer business, the smartphones. Lenovo held its ground in market share so of the top 3 its the only one able to keep pace with the computer industry growth rate and it obviously sells computers in all the sectors of the industry. Samsung and Apple gave up market share while holding their top rankings. The race in the midfield is very intense and close.

Thats the state of the computer industry and how its being devoured by the smartphone side. HP is signalling a return to smartphones after the mess it made of its Palm purchase some years back. Dell so far has not shown any interest in returning to mobile after it got burned badly with Windows based smartphones. (This blog corrected, earlier Apple share showed 15%, thanks to reader Rocwurst for spotting the math error)

If you wanted more stats on the mobile industry, check out the TomiAhonen Almanac 2015, there are a dozen sample graphs for you and the ordering link at this page.

Comments

[Winter]

A very interesting, and more "fair", table would account for computer power (bits moved * cycles ~ #CPU cores ~ dollar sales) or number of users (i.e., cloud computing).

[RickO]

Bloodbath global / annual smartphone sales - top 10. Lenovo sales obviously include Motorola phones. ZTE sells Nubia phones and Huawei sells Honor phones but both under their respective parents name - but BBK owns and sells Oppo , Vivo and OnePlus phones supposedly as completely seperate entities. How does that change the top 10.

[Wayne Borean]

Fascinating, but would love to see OS numbers.

For those new to the subject, Nathan P. Myhrvold, then a Microsoft exec wrote a long email to Bill Gates back in September 1993 in which he predicts the mobile revolution. Microsoft developed Windows CE into a mobile phone OS as a result. At one point Microsoft had nearly 25% of the SmartPhone OS market (go easy on me - that percentage is from memory), but only for a very short period of time. Microsoft was never able to leverage its Windows Desktop monopoly to gain a monopoly position in SmartPhones.

Microsoft has never been able to do well in a competitive market. No one knows why Microsoft is so bad at competing, but they are.

Tomi, I don't know if you have access to the numbers, but I've been hearing that Microsoft has been lobbying to keep Google Chrome OS computers from being counted as Personal Computers by the big analyst houses. I have no idea if this is true, as I've no access to the raw numbers. I have anecdotal evidence that Google Chrome OS has a significant market share, but we all know how reliable anecdotal evidence is!

http://www.microsoft.com/about/companyinformation/timeline/timeline/docs/bp_roadkill.rtf

[NO ONE WANTS WINDOWS]

Why microsoft can't compete???? Wow, that question is extremely easy to figure out.... Let's start with:

Microsofts's business model is to simply leverage it's abusive desktop monopoly position. Conclusion: Microsoft is a BRAIN DEAD monopolist!

There is no other answer because over the years of their reign they have alienated their partners, crapped on their developers, lost market share, turned out extraordinarly crappy products (which has earned them the moniker: NO ONE BUYS MICROSOFT UNLESS THEY ARE FORCED TOO!), microsoft supplys enormous amounts of insecure code and has truly become the raw material of the virus industry, microsoft invades people's privacy, screws their customers and enterprise clients, has a crappy UI, earned the scorn of whole industries such as mobile operators, ....etc. There reputation is in the toilet.

The history lesson is that EVERYTHING microsoft does is a blatant monopoly attempt using their really slow, bloated, resource hogging, buggy and virus ridden OS over and over and over ...again and again and again in their products ....They will step on anyone in their futile attempts at new products and as a result microsoft fails over and over and over again. ...It has become fun to watch their desperation as they circle the drain.

All you microsoft astroturfers: For the New Years eve remember to shout at mid-night NO ONE WANTS WINDOWS ON A PHONE! LoL!!!

[zlutor]

@Tomi: any numbers about Indian manufacturers, especially Intex?
It is interesting since Intex #1 in India and it is coming with a Sailfish powered device soon(?). it would be good to know what is the magnitude they are playing in...

[abdul muis]

The satya Nadela interview about Unsustainable WP market share were available on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=118&v=tHPejMRHTGc

[abdul muis]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHPejMRHTGc

[Rocwurst]

Tomi, I believe you've got Apple's iPhone + iPad + iPod touch + Mac totals incorrect.

For calendar 2014 it should be just on 300 million Apple devices.
For the more recent fiscal 2015 year the total is 333.5 million Apple devices.

CY2014 (millions):
iPhones 192.6
iPads 63.36
iPod Touch 7.5
Macs 18.14
iOS Device total: 281.6
Apple Device Total: 299.7

FY2015 (millions):
iPhones 230.9
iPads 54.78
iPod Touch 6
Macs 20.9
iOS Device total: 312.6
Apple Device Total: 333.5

Let me know if you think any of those totals are incorrect (iPod touch sales are estimates based on declining trajectory since last reported by Apple and does not include non-iOS iPods).

Now that Apple has released the 4th generation AppleTV with the iOS-derived TVOS and App Store, we might need to start including those figures as well going forward.

[Murky]

@Rocwurst:

"Now that Apple has released the 4th generation AppleTV with the iOS-derived TVOS and App Store, we might need to start including those figures as well going forward."

If you want to do that, you'll also have to include all other SmartTV boxes. But I don't think these are really relevant. Most people buying this stuff won't use it much as a computing device, they'll most likely buy it to stream content to their TV. Just because it allows custom apps, these will be completely different in content than on something that's being used primarily to do traditional computing stuff.

At some point we need to distinguish between a device that's being used for traditional 'computer' stuff and something that just happens to require enough processing power to allow it being used for secondary tasks as well.

As things are, I happen to own both an Amazon FireTV and a new AppleTV, but I consider them both far too unwieldy to be used for anything more than as a streaming box and to play the occasional game.

Sorry, but this is just a transparent ploy to artificially increase numbers. I guess long term these boxes will disappear anyway with the required functionality being directly accesible from new TV sets.

All that said, the Apple number definitely looks wrong. 256m would be less than the year before and that can't be correct.

[Rocwurst]

Murky, you do realise I didn't include the AppleTV in the numbers I provided?

I merely ruminated on the future possibility of needing to expand our definitions further as such devices get smarter and more capable (just as Tomi has already expanded the definition of computer to include phones and tablets)

[Wayne Borean]

@NO ONE WANTS WINDOWS

You are taking a complex matter, and simplifying it to the point of ridiculousness.

Yes, Microsoft attempts to leverage its Windows Desktop monopoly. It did this with Office, and even there it nearly failed (success came from making it impossible for the programmers working on Word Perfect to produce a functional product, and by bundling).

But a company as large as Microsoft, with as many different product lines, should have had a success on at least one of them. That they didn't is statistically weird.

You can't argue that Microsoft employees and managers are incompetent. I've known a number of people who worked there, and they were the sort of people anyone would hire. In fact Facebook, Apple, Google, and other companies have been hiring them.

So why is Microsoft incapable of building products that people really want to buy?

My personal theory is that part of the problem is that the corporate culture became corrosive when Microsoft implemented Stack Ranking. Go read the MiniMSFT blog, the details of how Stack Ranking ruined the corporate culture are there.

But even that doesn't fully explain things. So why does Microsoft come across as totally incompetent?

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Rocwurst

Thanks for spotting that. My bad. So yeah, these are calendar year numbers obviously as this is not an Apple blog and doesn't live by the weird calendar of some corporation's fiscal year standard haha... but thanks, I corrected the Apple numbers and credited you for spotting my math error. (so Apple should be at 16% not 15%)

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Rocwurst]

No problems Tomi.
One more question, I notice you haven't included the 18.14 million Macs sold in calendar year 2014 in Apple's numbers - is there a reason for this? You've included computer numbers for all the PC manufacturers so it seems a bit odd not to count Apple's computers (Macs) along with their iOS devices.

[Togga]

For a couple of month ago Microsoft dropped below 50% for the first time on statcounter combined with all their OSes (now down at 48.6%). December 2015 provides another first, Android has overtaken Win7 and a Microsoft OS is no longer in first place.

http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-ww-monthly-201412-201512

[Togga]

Wrong link in previous post. It should include Mobile of course:

http://gs.statcounter.com/#all-os-ww-monthly-201412-201512

[chithanh]

@Togga
> a Microsoft OS is no longer in first place.

You can't say that because "Android" is all versions lumped together in that report.

Either you count all versions separately, then Windows 7 will still be highest.
Or you count all versions as one, then Microsoft Windows is at 48.6%, which is higher than Android at 27.05%.

[Winter]

@Wayne Borean
"My personal theory is that part of the problem is that the corporate culture became corrosive when Microsoft implemented Stack Ranking. "

I think that Stack Ranking is a symptom of a more fundamental trait of MS: MS has been build from the start on exploitation. MS has exploited customers, partners, employees and everybody else from the very start.

The episode where Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer tried to cut Paul Allen out of the business is telling. The tales Paul Allen tells about the early years of MS tell us that it was an abusive organization from the very start.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1371608/Bill-Gates-tried-cut-Paul-Allen-Microsoft-fell-ill-cancer.html

In short, MS is geared to fleecing everyone they can, even "friends" and co-workers. And all reports show that this focus translates down to all levels within the company.

That singular focus translates in products that are not geared to entice users, but to exploit them.

[Tester]

@Winter:

No company working on such principles from the start could ever succeed, it would have crumbled long before Windows ever became profitable.

Sorry, but that's clearly the hater speaking. As for the story you cite, you can find such things nearly everywhere in a profit-driven corporate culture. It's simply part of that kind of business (and one of the reasons why I have little sympathy for Big Business - especially the American variant - in general.

My personal opinion of Microsoft's problems can be summed up with two words: Steve Ballmer.

Steve Ballmer is exactly the kind of person you speak of, someone who is driven by exploiting others, and it clearly should show by now in the corporate structure as such attitudes tend to permeate through the ranks.

What we now witness is the aftereffects of the Ballmer-induced rot. It may take a few years to take it out. Of course, then it may be too late.

BTW, I see much of the same starting to happen at Apple, where ideology tends to override common sense when product and design decisions are being made. I wouldn't be surprised if they ultimately end up in the same situation. Currently the simply run on their quasi-religious followership - otherwise the Apple Watch would have tanked like any other smartwatch in the market. It should be clear by now that nobody needs such a product - aside from those rich idiots who think that showing off this crap increases their status.

[Winter]

@Tester
"No company working on such principles from the start could ever succeed, it would have crumbled long before Windows ever became profitable."

Read the article in the link about how Gates bullied people. You do remember that Gates started MS' ascent by selling IBM an OS he did not have? He also cheated his long time friend Paul Allen out of a considerable part of his shares. MS have screwed over their partners, IBM and everyone who bought into MSX, from the start.

[Tester]

@Winter:

"You do remember that Gates started MS' ascent by selling IBM an OS he did not have?"

And you really think that's an isolated occurence? That's how big business works!

"He also cheated his long time friend Paul Allen out of a considerable part of his shares. "

Again, I doubt he was the only one who ever did this.

" MS have screwed over their partners, IBM and everyone who bought into MSX, from the start."

All I say here is 'Citation needed'. Where was IBM 'screwed over', for example?

And where is this worse than what other companies are doing - just as an example, what do you think about Oracle's ridiculous lawsuit against Google over the Java API copyright?
No matter where you look, abusive tactics left and right. It's common practice in a pool of sharks.

You seem to single out Microsoft as the only Evil One here, whereas I believe that the others are nothing better, they only show more skill at hiding their evilness to the public. That's one aspect where Ballmer completely lost it.