Communities Dominate Brands

Smartphone Q1 Stats including Installed Base (now with forked Android data also included) - hey, a new brand into Top 10

Time for Q1 Quarterly data for smartphone market. We do have a new brand into the Top 10. And I will now report the forked Android slice in the installed base, as we finally can estimate that number from solid sources. So lets do the market overall. The average of the big analyst houses gives us a total market size in calendar Quarter 1 (January-March) of 2017 as 350.4 million smartphones sold globally. That is up 5% compared to the same quarter a year ago. This period is the gift-giving season in China and Chinese sales (and brands) tend to overshadow others in this quarter. If the full year continues on a 5% growth path, we'd look at about 1.55 Billion total smartphones sold this year. Lets do the big table:

BIGGEST SMARTPHONE MANUFACTURERS BY UNIT SALES IN Q1 2017

Rank . . . Manufacturer . Units . . . Market Share . Was Q4 2016 
1 (2) . . . Samsung . . . .  79.4 M . . 22.7% . . . . . . . ( 17.9% ) 
2 (1) . . . Apple  . . . . . . . 50.8 M . . 14.5% . . . . . . . ( 18.0% ) 
3 (3) . . . Huawei  . . . . . . 34.6 M . . . 9.9% . . . . . . . (10.4% ) 
4 (4) . . . Oppo . . . . . . . . 28.0 M . . . 8.0% . . . . . . . (   7.1% )
5 (5) . . . Vivo . . . . . . . . . 22.0 M . . . 6.3% . . . . . . . (   5.6% ) 
6 (9) . . . LG  . . . . . . . .  . 14.8 M . . . 4.2% . . . . . . . (   3.3% ) 
7 (7) . . . Lenovo .  . . . . . 13.2 M . . . 3.8% . . . . . . . (   3.8% )
8 (8) . . . Gionee . . . . . . . .9.6 M . . . 2.7% . . . . . . .  (   3.5% )
9 (6) . . . ZTE  . . . . . . . . . 9.2 M . . . 2.6% . . . . . . . (   5.2% )
10 (10) . TCL/Alcatel . . .  8.7 M . . . 2.5% . . . . . . . (  2.4% ) 
Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80.2 M
TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350.4 M

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 25 May 2017, based on manufacturer and industry data
This table may be freely shared 

Thats the big table. Newcomer Gionee is of course from China. Did you even notice who is no longer in the table? Yeah, Xiaomi has now dropped out of the Top 10. TCL/Alcatel and ZTE can hang on because of their large international footprint, even if they have a hard time in China, they still sell enough in volume to be more stable in their standings. And for LG, gotta say in this China gift-giving period, good job to climb back to number 6 and for their business, they're at about break-even to return to profits again if they're lucky. Samsung is of course the biggest. Apple is safe in second place, with Huawei lurking back there solidly in third rank.


The OS wars is 85% Andorid, 14.5% iOS and about half a percent more or less, all others. But note, of Android, one third are forked AOSP devices (maybe more this quarter with China sales at its annual peak level)

The Installed Base looks like this:

SMARTPHONE INSTALLED BASE AT END OF MARCH 2017 BY OPERATING SYSTEM

Rank . OS Platform . . . . Units . . . . Market share  Was Q4 2016
1 . . . . All Android . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,584 M . . . 81 % . . . . . . ( 79 %)  
a . . . . . . Pure Android/Play . . . . 1,757 M . . . 55%
b . . . . . . Forked Anroid/AOSP . . . 827 M . . . 26%
2 . . . . iOS  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603 M . . . 19 % . . . . . . ( 19 %) 
Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 M  . . . . 1 % . . . . . . (   1 %)
TOTAL Installed Base . 3,211 M smartphones (ie 3.2 Billion) in use at end of Q1, 2017

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 25 May 2017, based on manufacturer and industry data
This table may be freely shared 

Industry sits at 3.2 Billion smartphones in use globally. 4 out of 5 smartphones in use has some version of Android on it, the rest are iPhones (lots of older iPhones still in circulation, Apple's installed base is significantly higher than its actual sales percentage, as the device has a passionate following). I now separate out also the pure Google Android ie Play Store capable devices and the forked Androids ie AOSP (Android Open Source Platform) devices mostly out of China and India. They are 32% of all Androids in use, so 26% of all smartphones in use.

As always, feel free to share the data. If you need more mobile industry numbers, check out the brand new TomiAhonen Almanac 2017. 

We Can Now Estimate Global Android Forked Installed Base ie AOSP Devices vs 'full Google' Android

Google just announced 2.0B total Android users worldwide, at the end of last week.

 

This is a big milestone clearly. It also is not a smartphone Android count: it includes tablets too. But it differs considerably from my count of 2.6B total Android smartphones in use. I've said many times before that in my count, I include all Android manufacturers, both those who offer full Google Play and 'official' Android users, and those who provide the Android-compatible 'forked' usually cheaper phones that run on AOSP (Android Open Source Platform). I did this because up to today, it was impossible to separate out the two flavors of Android, so I just reported the top-line number. Most phones sold for example in China and India run AOSP while nearly all 'Android' smartphones in the rich world are full Google Android phones. Obviously in rough terms, about two thirds of all smartphones sold worldwide are 'official' Android and one third are 'forked' Android or AOSP versions.

We do not know the proportion by tablets, but it is very likely that the tablet market strongly mirrors the smarphone market. This means, that for the first time my consultancy can give a rough estimate of the total Android market separating out the AOSP devices. We also can then calculate out the smartphone market and its shares. Now that we have this data, I will be including it into the global market share installed base numbers as I publish those.

So here is my rough math. I estimate that out of the about 450 million total Android tablets sold so far (through Dec 2016) about 75% are still in use (tablets have a longer life span than smartphones, they are replaced less frequently than phones; and for comparisons, I estimate iPads have still 80% in use). So I get 340 million active Android tablets in use. When we add that to the Android smartphone count of 2.6 Billion, we arrive at 2.94B total Android devices (including AOSP) in use.

From the 2.94B total Android installed base, we see Google only 'sees' 2.0B ie 68%. That tells us that about 32% of all nominally 'Android' devices that have been sold, according to public sales data, are not visible to Google, so they are not 'official' Android. They are thus AOSP devices. I will use the assumption that this percentage will be the same for both smartphones and tablets (until we get any better data) and thus, we get a rough count for the Android 2.6 Billion installed base smartphone market: It splits 68% official Android (ie Play Store compatible) at 1.8B smartphones; vs 800 million AOSP devices whose owners would typically get their apps from a local branded app store or some national app store.

For context, lets remember that Apple iOS has about 600 million iPhones in use (and 300 million iPads plus the last 100M are miscellaneous other iOS gadgets like iPod Touch media players, Apple Watches etc). So out of the 'real addressable app store' ecosystem approach, Google-managed part of Android is currently pretty much three times as large as Apple's iOS in terms of smartphones. (that being the primary focus for my blog, ie it is the real 'mobile' opportunity we track). For the full-portfolio digital device scope, official Android is about 2x larger than iOS, when tablets and others are added. Note that as consumers, most who own an iPad will also own an iPhone, etc, so the unique smartphone market is also nearly the same as 'total unique users' on that given platform.

One last observation, the total Android 'potential' market beyond smartphones is 2.94 B and shortly 3.0B when AOSP devices (smartphones and tablets) are included. This is the potental that Google may be able to reach in future editions and on the migration and upgrade paths of those consumers. Apple's 'ceiling' is pretty close to the 600 million it now has, and is trying to sell SECOND gadgets to existing iFans, ie Apple Watches and new Macbooks etc, to existing iPhone owners.

I figured my readers were eagerly hoping to get these numbers; I certainly was thrilled to finally be able to estimate the AOSP share out of total Android smartphones.

(I will soon do the market share numbers for Q1 of 2017, but that race is no longer in any way dramatic...)

PS for those who need 'all' the data on handsets, remember the brand new TomiAhonen Phone Book 2016 (released every 2 years) came out just last December so the numbers are quite fresh covering the end of the year 2016. See more about TomiAhonen Phone Book here.

iPhone Q1 Results: Second Year in Row that January Quarter Sales are Down in Absolute Units vs same Quarter the Year Before

So we're into the quarterly sales data in the smartphone wars. Apple reported 50.8 million units of iPhones in calendar quarter 1 ie January-March quarter. That is down 1% vs same quarter a year ago. More relevantly, this is now the second consecutive year that the first quarter of the year starts with unit sales actually down vs the same period the year before. Apple's best-ever Q1 was in 2015, when they sold 61.1 million iPhones. That came down to 51.2 million in Q1 of 2016 and now down further to 50.8 million for Q1 of 2017. Apple's peak year in total annual iPhone unit sales was of course also 2015 with 231.4 million unit sales. That came down to 215.4 million last year and now this weak start to 2017 suggests Apple heading to perhaps flat, perhaps even slightly more down sales this year. The market share picture looks worse, Q1 of last year Apple held 15.3% and now has 14.6% a decline of three quarters of one point of market share.

In terms of annual market share, Apple picked a good year to have declining sales last year, as the industry growth overall stumbled and was essentially flat. So Apple's market share did not suffer much. They dropped from 16.1% in 2015 to 14.6% in 2016. But the industry has returned to growth. The industry is now again growing at 4% per year and now if Apple sales are flat vs 2016, their market share will fall to about 14%. And until the next models arrive, there is nothing to rescue the rest of the year from the regular annual 'down-cycle' that Apple now is in. This before we consider the rumors that the new iPhone 8 may be delayed in its launch. 

If Apple ends at 14% it is nothing to sneeze at, Apple is safely the second-largest smartphone maker still this year, but Huawei might break into double-digits and if this year ends with a race say of Apple around 14% and Huawei around 12%, then NEXT year we could have a real race... Also please remember, Apple is the most profitable company in human economic history and sits on a gargantual pile of cash. They are more rich than god. So don't cry for Apple, they're definitely the biggest winner in smartphones, in handsets, in mobile, in tech and in corporate industry the planet has ever seen. But just don't think the iOS ecosystem is a 'mass market'. It is a niche market for rich people - albeit a very large niche market.