Smartphone Wars: iPhone 40.4M is about 12% market share for Q2 of 2016

Quick note from the smartphone wars amidst all the political coverage. Apple reported its Apr-Jun quarter results. iPhone sales 40.4 million, down 21% from the previous quarter. I estimate iPhone quarterly share of all smartphones at about 11.6% (down from 15.3% in the previous quarter). To compare one year ago, the market share for iPhone was 13.6% this same quarter. I will of course collect the data for all smartphones and report the full market data when all the info has come in

Comments

[Abdul Muis]

1.2 million Lumia, down 50% from Q before
http://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-finally-revealed-sort-how-many-lumia-phones-it-sold-q2-2016

[Per "wertigon" Ekström]

@Wayne: Apple is not in any trouble atm. Not saying it is, either.

But - with 10% market share - a level they are rapidly approaching - and a shrinking technological advantage, it will be more and more difficult to justify purchasing Apple with it's entire different ecosystem incompatible with the rest of the world. Just like in the 90s, it was a stretch to justify buying Apple when it was so different from the rest of the world.

So yes Apple is doing great at the moment. That will change as Android "premium" devices will be good enough compared to Apple phones, at half the cost.

[Abdul Muis]

@PWE

Android premium already better than iPhone. Apple survive/being able at the top of the chain is NOT because better device but perception of prestige/premiumness.

[Per "wertigon" Ekström]

@Wayne:

You keep waving around that profitability like it is the alpha and the omega.

Guess what, Microsoft were highly profitable too - by orders of magnitude - over Apple in the nineties. They are still highly profitable. But today, not near the unstoppable force they were in the nineties, and more and more their bread-and-butter - the Office/Windows combo - is getting eroded, piece by piece.

It seems like Apple now must find a new cash cow or slowly settle into the same hole Microsoft is in... :)

[Asko]

@Wayne
TBH, Nokia no longer makes rubber boots (nor car tires, nor toilet paper). They sold the operations to a newly formed companies named "Nokian footwear" and "Nokian tyres" (note the extra N) who make the rubber stuff and are in no way connected to Nokia.
But Nokia still makes base stations. You can use that to finish your text.

[Per "wertigon" Ekström]

@Wayne:

Yeah MS is still around...

But Apple in smartphone market? Right now Apple is incompatible with the rest of the world. With ever diminishing market share, that is not an advantage, and if you think it is then I got a bridge to sell you. :)

[chithanh]

@Wayna Brady
> Don't blame me for your poor recollection of the conversations here. you can go reread them yourself. And don't mix "market share" with unit sales. The spike was about unit sales.
> Tomi and the regular crowd here thought the large screen iphones were "boring, me too" - there were going to flop.

For a moment I wondered whether my memory was actually failing me or whether an Apple persecution complex made you misremember things. Now I am certain.

Tomi said that the lack of large screen iPhones is what cost Apple lots of sales. He didn't say that large screen iPhones were going to be a flop, this term was applied only to the Apple Watch. You know how Tomi treats people who put words in his mouth, so better back up (or out of) your claims about what he said.

Going back to the threads where quarterly numbers after iPhone launch were discussed, the general sentiment was that the large screen effect would wear off, just how long that would take was up to debate. That the effect would wear off after only a single quarter was not something anyone of the regulars said, and even from the non-regulars I have a hard time finding such claims.

[chithanh]

About Microsoft:
Microsoft are still around and will dominate the PC market. They are currently milking dry the customers who are locked into their ecosystem (mostly Office).

But they are no longer relevant to the future of computing. Together with the moribund PC market, Microsoft's trajectory will continue to point downward, until they find new business areas that continue to be relevant. Their attempt in mobile spectacularly failed. Cloud is going so-so. Hardware is doing ok after initial big losses, but at the cost of angering their PC OEMs. AR seems too insignificant still for them, let's see if they can create a mass-market product out of Hololens.

[cornelius]

The rumors about Surface Phone running Android instead of Windows are gaining more traction.

http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/44695/20160731/microsoft-surface-phone-2016-release-date-specs-price-handsets-to-run-android-not-windows.htm

If that's true, I'm throwing a party, everyone's invited.

[Paul]

@chithanh

I'll refresh your memory a bit. You have a good point in saying that any claims about past should be paired with a proper data to prove it.
I have no doubt that this comment gets deleted but I'll give it a go. First the iPhone 6 is me-too, then the spike "is over" quarter after quarter after quarter:

After iPhone 6 launch:

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2014/09/lets-discuss-the-iphone-6-models-apple-now-in-me-too-mode-only-following-the-leaders/comments/page/5/#comments

Tomi:
"The iPhone 6 model range is ho-hum 'me too' copycat range now. Nothing spectacular here at all."
"The growth in absolute unit sales will be worst its been, the iPhone market share for Christmas 2014 and Spring 2015 will be worst its been in years."
"next year powered mostly by this model range, the iPhone market share continues to fall to something near 12%."

You (disagreeing with Apple Turfer):
"So you are saying that Apple will gain 22 million users from Android next quarter? For comparison, Apple sold 51 million iPhones in Q4 2013."
(Apple ended up selling 74M iPhones Q4 2014 - 23 million more - if you have forgotten by now.)

After Q4 results:

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2015/01/apple-passes-nokia-microsoft-for-all-their-phones-smart-and-dumb-bloodbath-results-apple-oct-dec-qua.html

Tomi:
"The big spike sales is OF COURSE driven by the loyalists who have to attend iChurch every year. Next scheduled iChurch gathering is April for the Midnight Mass of the hailing of the Apple Watch."
"Will 2015 get easier for the iPhone 6 or worse? WE KNOW IT WILL BE WORSE. Every quarter now, Q1, Q2 and Q3 of 2015, the market share of the iPhone will fall. And the rivals are going to be FAR stronger, and the iPhone 6 class will be increasingly seen as quaint but obsolescent - most of all on its CAMERA.
So, if any of you want to post a prediction with your name, that you expect iPhone to INCREASE market share in 2015, be my guest. I am solid in my prediction that YET AGAIN the market share will be DOWN in 2015." (comments)
"I think these are very strong drivers of the Q4 2014 spike." (comments)

After Q1 results:

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2015/04/smartphone-wars-apple-lg-results-for-q1-plus-samsung-and-industry.html

Tomi:
"Apple results out obviously. iPhone sales down 11% from Q4 to 61.1M and prelim market share is down to 17% from 20% last quarter. The large screen bump to the iPhone is now subsiding clearly."

After Q2 results:

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2015/07/smartphone-wars-apple-results-microsoft-results-huawei-numbers.html

"Apple is bleeding market share annually, has been for years, and the rest of the hysteria about iPhone 6 Plus massive jump was just noise. Stay on the real numbers, you won't be misled by the hype."
"thats what the iWorld looks like and the phablet surge is well past us...." (comments)

After Q3 results:

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2015/10/iphone-quarter-we-are-perilously-close-to-peak-iphone-now-also-lets-do-huawei.html

Tomi:
"So Apple results out. In Q3 calendar quarter (not fiscal Qtr) iPhone sold 48.0 million units, up 1% from Q2. this was achieved by launching in China on the launch weekend, where 3M iPhones were sold. So an Apples-to-Apples comparsion would be 45 milllion sales which is down 6% from Q2 which brings the 'normal' back to the unit sales quarterly sales pattern to roughly what it was before the long-awaited phablet screens finally launched as the 6 series last year. So now we are about 'normal' again."

[Per "wertigon" Ekström]

@Paul:

"Will 2015 get easier for the iPhone 6 orh worse? WE KNOW IT WILL BE WORSE. Every quarter now, Q1, Q2 and Q3 of 2015, the market share of the iPhone will fall. And the rivals are going to be FAR stronger, and the iPhone 6 class will be increasingly seen as quaint but obsolescent - most of all on its CAMERA."

Do note the timing. Samsung had yet to release their S6, Sony had yet to perform their marketing blunder, the Snapdragon 810 had yet to show how badly engineered it actually was.

Tomi expected rivals to be stronger than they were. As did I. As did most other Apple sceptics. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say.

Or - It's like, Gladstone Gander [1] would challenge say, Muhammad Ali to a boxing game (in his prime). Everyone would (correctly) laugh at the challenger and ridicule him - he doesn't even train for the fight!

Yet come match time Ali slips on a banana peel that for some reason went into the ring and slams his head into the fist of his opponent - instant K.O. It's like that, but with multiple rivals taking a swing - and slipping on a banana peel. That wasn't even supposed to be there in the first place. That is the sheer blind luck Apple had with the iPhone 6, that changed their surge into a 20-foot tsunami. Then the smartphone market growth collapsed ahead of time, too - which means a 20-foot tsunami became a 100-foot tsunami.

Congrats Apple, but it will take far more than that to change the fate of the iPhone... :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_family_(Disney)#Gladstone_Gander

[John A]

The latest rumour are it will not be a iPhone 7, it will be called iPhone 6SE or something. Because it will almost looks same as the current models, and only have minor features improvment etc..

Iris scanner and new stuff will not happend until 2018.

I dont know if this rumours from Evan Blass and others are thrue. But if it is I think the sales of iPhones will continue to drop. Tim Cook seems like a CEO that are very conservative and not a guy that will take big leaps in technology.

[Abdul Muis]

@John A,

I also heard that Apple will change it's strategy, but don't know when they will start.

In the past Apple do the tick-tock (Major-Minor) strategy like intel, but rumors say that Apple will change it to Major-Minor-Minor.

[Per "wertigon" Ekström]

@Wayne:

So what you're essentially saying is that Apple has no competition to speak of and that's why they will do great forever?

Yeah, as I said, got a bridge to sell you... :)

[Abdul Muis]

I'm interested in the new subject wayne brought here.

Apple keep saying that it got lots of Android switcher. I was wondering how many Apple user switch to android.

[Abdul Muis]

@PWE

Seeing apple number, and the rumors of 3 year major redesign cycle, and also a report of Qualcomm good sales for 2016. I think we might see apple market share down faster than predicted.

Of course... Apple can fight back by lowering price or making more screen size i.e. 4", 4,5", 5", 5.5", 6".

[chithanh]

@Paul
Look how it did not disagree with AppleTurfer in that comment, I asked a question whether this was actually his prediction. Note how AppleTurfer himself slightly backtracked in his following comment.

Also do note that the comments on later posts also take into account that the China launch was split off into a different quarter for iPhone 6 but not 6s. Then Tomi predicted a slight decline in market share and it ended to be a 1.3 percentage point increase, but that was not due to something Apple did.
And Tomi was correct on the big screen bump subsiding. The first full quarter of sales gave the biggest bump, and the effect was wearing off over the following quarters.

@Abdul Muis
Apple probably has a net gain from Android switchers because they don't sell low-end phones. As users' economic situation improves they are able to afford more expensive devices and only then become part of the Apple target group.

[paul]

It looks there is a new Paul here. I guess that will be some confusion due to two Pauls.

[chithanh]

As I see it, there is one "paul" and one "Paul". Only Microsoft and Apple have problems with case-sensitivity :)

[Abdul Muis]

Wayne Brady sounds more and more like Baron95 to me....

@paul & @chitanh

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