Now the Official Xiaomi Number ('over 70M') and apparently only 1M Windows 10 Lumia devices for Xmas

A few numbers in the smartphone wars.

First off, that Xiaomi number. So this is now the official number (I mistakenly reported on an old news story last time). Xiaomi said their full year 2015 sales were 'more than 70 million'. Not more precise than that. Lets say its about 71 million. Their last official number was 'slightly below 35 million' for first half of 2015, so if we say thats 34 million, then their 'year-halfs' grew from 34 million to 37 million. I would hope the Chinese started to report actual unit sales to one decimal point of millions, in accuracy and every quarter. But still, this is better than nothing. 71 million would be 16% growth vs 2014 and give Xiaomi a rough market share of about 4.7%. For the Christmas quarter, Xiaomi's sales would be roughly flat 18.5 million vs the estimated Q3 (and consistent with Chinese regulator data on new smartphone sales in China being flat QoQ) and the quarterly market share be about 4%. So Xiaomi is there in that crowded mid-field in the race for final rank of 2015 unit sales and market share.

Then two other numbers. Flurry is not the best of measures for the total market but they give good trend data and in this case, are likely a pretty good source. II am talking about screen sizes out of the total population. Flurry just reported on Q4 smallish device sales (smartphones and tablets) by screen size. Phablets now account for one third of all new smartphones sold. Small screen smartphones (under 3.5 inch screen size) is down to 1% of new sales. And how are phablets vs tablets? Phablets sell about 50% more than all tablets combined. Yeah, its once again exactly as I predicted on something many argued vehemently that tablets would win. No, mobile always wins. Mobile + Anything = Mobile. It happened with stand-alone PDAs, it happened with stand-alone MP3 players, it happened with stand-alone cameras, and now it happened with stand-alone tablets.

When I do a very rough estimate of actual unit numbers based on the percentages reported by Flurry, suggests total market for new phablets sold in 2015 was 285 million units, and traditional tablets 300 million. For 2016 if those trends continue on linear pattern, phablet new sales would be 660 million units and traditional tablets roughly flat at maybe 310 million units. I don't mean these as a formal forecast, as even Flurry's own methodology gives less than precise starting points, but in rough terms those are reasonable numbers. Year 2015 was the year when in quarterly sales phablets shot past tablets, but for full year the sales were nearly even. For this year 2016 phablets will definitely sell far more. In very rough terms, phablets will sell in very very rough terms, twice the number compared to traditional tablets (say plus/minus at least 100M for either form factor). Meanwhile out of all smartphones? Right now, one third of all smartphones sold have phablet-size screens. If the trend continues in linear pattern through 2016, by December 2016, 44% of all new smartphones sold will be phablets. For the full year, again, in very very rough estimate based on Flurry measurements of recent years, we could see about 39% of new phones sold this year.

Then the happy news for some of our readers. Windows 10 is being crushed in the smartphone wars. Microsoft reported 200 million Win 10 devices activated. There is an analysis by Mary Jo Foley at ZD Net, who has split that 200M number into PC, Xbox and smartphone platforms. 180M are PCs, 18M are Xbox devices and only 1M are Lumia and other smartphones for Xmas sales. If you had any hopes Windows 10 would be the magic to revive Lumia sales, haha, yes, keep on dreaming. Windows platform for smartphones is dead, Microsoft will soon be shutting down the Lumia business, this is total failure and suggests Xmas sales for Luma will once again be horrid (and do expect more layoffs again to come). Besides, once again, who told you so, haha.. Ok, more smartphone wars stats as they come in.

Comments

[tm]

>> and do expect more layoffs again to come

And why would someone think this is good news?

[cornelius]

@tm
Well, sometimes getting fired pushes you to find a better job. It just happened to me late last year. So it can be good news. Anyway, you know very well that when Tomi said it was good news he was not referring to the job losses, he was referring to the death of the Lumia. And that is indeed good news. The only regret I have is that Lumia did not die earlier. I was hoping for a Kin kind of death, but I guess later is better than never.

[NO ONE WANTS WINDOWS]

Thanks for the great windows phone news Tomi :-) We all know that microsoft builds totally bloated, virus-ridden, insecure crappy software and then tries to jam that crap down everyone's throat simply because they are a monopoly. But windows phone is such a enormous piece of crap and totally innovation free that no one will ever buy it and they can't force it down everyone's throat because they are "no where" in mobile and their customers, who they astroturfed, FUD'ed and crapped on for years, can get enormously better solutions from Android or Apple ....too funny.

I just love it when microsoft, the abusive monopolist, continuously fails to enter new markets by blatantly attempting to leverage their existing monopoly position with their virus-ridden insecure crappy software...because being a monopoly that's all they know. They are truly brain dead!

Tomi makes it official for 2016 that the WP circling the toilet trend continues because NO ONE WANTS WINDOWS ON A PHONE! ..."tic, toc, tic, toc ...that satisfying flush is coming soon LoL!!!!!

[Tester]

@Wayne Brady:

"And yet it moves. Or in this case...and yet Msft still makes and sells Lumia. And WP still outsells all the other platforms."

Stop deluding yourself. That 1M is pathetic - at least it were if Microsoft still was seriously conducting this business.

It's a loss-making mess, that cannot be shut down overnight. But it's clearly being wound down. Ask yourself, why are the numbers this bad?

If Microsoft was serious, they'd try to create at least some buzz to boost the market. But what happens? Nothing! It's a dead business running on inertia alone, with WP holdovers buying a replacement being the only customers left.

It's really funny actually talking to people who just ignore the signs being written on the wall. "Continuum will ensure future viability" and blah, blah like this. Seems to me that even that is a dead horse. I wouldn't really be surprised if the entire Metro fiasco gets halted next and business being moved back to the trusty old Win32 which developers actually LIKE.

And having again drunk too much Apple juice, haven't we?

[Tester]

WP only is not dead because of the image problems Microsoft would get if they shut it down NOW, just after Win 10 Mobile was ready for deployment. Doing that would give a disastrous sign to investors.

I believe, if that hadn't been on the horizon they'd have scaled down the business a lot more last year.
But the utterly lackluster marketing efforts that get employed here are telling the true picture.

It'll be safe to shut down once the Win 10 hype has died down and nobody thinks about Continuum anymore. I'm with Tomi here. Next fall, i.e. 2 years after restructuring, is the latest I'd expect this to happen.

The Surface tablets are a different story, as they run an unamputated version of Windows so they can directly benefit from the near monopoly Msft has on the desktop. The CrippleWindows being used on phones bears little relationship to the Windows ecosystem, because despite Ballmer's efforts, that's still >90% on the trusty old Win32 API, so there's very little synergy - and the pathetic market share will efficiently ensure that the current attempts to bridge this gap will be futile. Why invest time and work into a new technology that only exists to support some quasi-dead subplatform? Developers would be stupid. And since Microsoft's current management is not as dense as Ballmer they are most certainly aware of the fact that this is a losing proposition that's going nowhere.

[NO ONE WANTS WINDOWS]

Let's face it microsoft products are simply crap! They have been for a long time. That's what an abusive monopolist does! microsoft has successfully trained their customers using bloated virus ridden software for decades to severely erode their reputation. They have crapped on their developers and customers with this windows crap so much that their reputation is in the toilet along with windows phone. No one will buy a windows phone or any microsoft consumer products. People got the message that windows is total crap.

Everyone lean out you windows at home and shout: NO ONE WANTS WINDOWS ON A PHONE!

[Winter]

@Lullz
"What Microsoft would need is a x86 compatible Windows 10 phone able to run Win32 apps."

Intell has been unable to deliver an x86 compatble CPU, let alone a system on a chip, that can compete with ARM on power use. X86 simply burns through your battery charge too fast.

On the other hand, MS have been unable to produce an enticing Windows version that can run legacy software on ARM. But trying to sell phones by leveraging office applications has shown to be a losing proposition anyway.

Both Apple and Google were able to bootstrap new "ecosystems". MS was around when that happened and saw how it was done. They either did not want to learn or did not want to understand how to do it. So they failed.

[Tester]

@Winter:

"On the other hand, MS have been unable to produce an enticing Windows version that can run legacy software on ARM. "

Make that 'unwilling'. All their Windows for ARM releases have been crippled in functionality, because they wanted to push their new UI.

And that's what brought the failure. Most people who saw that instantly rejected it and anything else became irrelevant. I think it's telling that even after 3 desktop versions of it it still hasn't gotten any traction and continues to inflict damage on Microsoft's business.

The reasons why WP initially failed were entirely political, not technological. They tried to carbon-copy Apple with their approach but completely missed that it needs very special customers to buy into such a restricted system.

[Winter]

@Tester
"Make that 'unwilling'. All their Windows for ARM releases have been crippled in functionality, because they wanted to push their new UI."

Windows, and all its applications, are welded onto the X86 instruction set. Applications would have to be ported to ARM, or MS should run Windows on a VM, or Wine. I think the VM/Wine road would be the only viable option. But it might not run fast enough on ARM to compete.

But MS were obviously also unwilling to adapt. When you consider consumers cattle that is there for you to be milked, you might not adapt quickly to shifts in user preferences.

[Tester]

@winter:

"Windows, and all its applications, are welded onto the X86 instruction set."

Why do you consider recompiling for a different platform impossible? Linux can do it, iOS can do it, Android can do it, even Windows/Metro can do it. So why not Win32?

There were even some alternative architectures supported in the past, so what would make ARM so special?

Sure, it would have meant one extra step, but that's hell of a lot less work for developers than reprogramming everything, as Microsoft demanded with WP7 and its API that was incompatible with absolutely everything.

[Winter]

@Tester
"So why not Win32?"

I am not a Windows programmer. But what I understand is that in the early days of NT, it was decided to cut corners to get more speed. So, Windows dropped Risc support and relied totally on direct access to X86 hardware features, e.g., the direct in Direct X.

Cross compiling won't work as there is no hardware abstraction. Linux and Metro were designed from the ground up to be hardware independent.

It is the old sins that still haunt MS.

[chithanh]

It is not true that Windows is welded onto x86. Not even on desktops. DEC showed otherwise with Windows NT for Alpha and FX!32.
It is true that Microsoft's attempts to bring it to other hardware platforms failed commercially so far.

In iPhone news, the WSJ reports that several Apple suppliers including TSMC have now issued profit warnings. This is consistent with earlier Nikkei reports of reduced component orders.

http://www.nasdaq.com/article/apples-slowing-iphone-sales-take-bite-out-of-suppliers-revenue-20160114-00244

[ch]

The Asus ZenFone Zoom uses an Intel chip so Intel chips can be used for phones. Besides it is the screen that uses the power, not so much the chip.

[Winter]

@chithan
"DEC showed otherwise with Windows NT for Alpha and FX!32."

Compatibility with the alpha was the result of copyright/patent suits brought against MS (NT was a clone of DEC VMS, according to US courts). This compatibility was dropped in 1999 in Windows 2000.

@ch
"Besides it is the screen that uses the power, not so much the chip."

The CPU still is a power drain. Compare the ARM and Intel based surface tablets. Intel have fought hard to get the Atom into phones and tablets. There are still few takers. So few that Intel is now making ARM chips.

[Winter]

Here is more about Windows on ARM.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/02/windows-on-arm-lives-on-even-as-it-dies/

[Winter]

In simple terms, in early days, application programners were likely to use X86 assembler to "optimize" code. All these optimizations must be ported "by hand" when cross compiling to ARM. Such porting of hardware optimizations is very expensive. Obviously, MS' developers too have made heavy use of such hardware optimizations.

It seems MS have concluded that porting the win32 API to ARM would not make economic sense as only few win32 applications would bother to invest the resources in doing the same. Without ported win32 applications, MS' work on the API would be a waste of money.

[Tester]

@Winter:

"Compatibility with the alpha was the result of copyright/patent suits brought against MS (NT was a clone of DEC VMS, according to US courts). This compatibility was dropped in 1999 in Windows 2000."

That may all be correct but ultimately it was dropped because the architecture was of no use. ARM is different.

"But what I understand is that in the early days of NT, it was decided to cut corners to get more speed. So, Windows dropped Risc support and relied totally on direct access to X86 hardware features, e.g., the direct in Direct X."

That was 20 years ago and not NT but Windows 95. The more direct hardware access was absolutely critical so that Windows could become a gaming platform (and in retrospect this was one of the most important decisions to turn Windows into the most widely used operating system.) Of course, this 'direct' hardware access was gradually phased out over the years and now only the name remains. Most DirectX components have long been deprecated and the still useful ones integrated into the driver model. Direct3D these days is just as abstract as OpenGL on other platforms - just better maintained so it doesn't suffer as much from the cruft that's bogging down lots of OpenGL drivers.

[John F]

@ NO ONE ...

Great statement but it must be divided like this ....

PC ERA

We all know that "MICROSOFT" builds totally bloated, virus-ridden, insecure crappy software and then tries to jam that crap down everyone's throat simply because they are a monopoly

MOBILE ERA

We all know that "ANDROID" builds totally bloated, virus-ridden, insecure crappy software and then tries to jam that crap down everyone's throat simply because they are a monopoly

[Per "wertigon" Ekström]

@John F:

Yeah, pretty much. Except for the fact that "ANDROID" should be substituted for "GOOGLE".

And the fact that should Google stray from the path too much, there is very little stopping anyone from making their own Android-compatible clone OS (slowly changing however...)

[Winter]

@Tester
"That was 20 years ago and not NT but Windows 95."

Assembly programming was quite common on XP.