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. 

Comments

[wolf]

Thanks for the numbers. Do you also have an estimate of the Nokia unit sales for Q1 2017?

[paul]

Obviously, the next big fight will be between pure-Android vs forked-Android. That will be fun to watch.

[obarthelemy]

@readandlearn You're either trolling or grossly misinformed. Android's way to solve the update issue is to move ever more stuff out of the OS.
On iOS, even an app like iClip requires an OS update.
On Android, even core OS features like WebView, Dialer, Pay, Health, Home and security updates don't.

Using OS version as an indicator of whether phones are up to date is meaningless and, at best, utterly misinformed.

[John A]

As for Sony I think their CEO told that they will remain in the phone business. If they pull out it will be to hard to make a comeback later. They must be in the space with all new IOT stuff that are coming. And they also sell camera sensors to other brands etc...

For Nokia I think its to early since they will not be globaly until the end of june. So for some statistics there we must wait for some more months.

Rumours says T-Mobile will making own phones in the US market (probably made by TCL)
And if the specs/price is great it might affect Samsung and iPhone/Apple duapoly in USA. So the smartphone wars are not over, seems a lot of things will happend during this year.

[Gul Dukat]

@ReadandLearn

"(everybody dreams about being in the Apple supply chain)"

No = not
Apple = pay little = cheap.
Apple = big quantity = bad term = small money = small profit
Android = Better
Android = big quantity = big profit = better term

[Abdul Muis]

@paul

"Obviously, the next big fight will be between pure-Android vs forked-Android. That will be fun to watch."

It's a win-win battle for Android.

[virgil]

Turns out, analysts were right, there IS a third big OS player in the mobile space!

(they were also wrong, in that the third player is iOS, not Windows. With they second being AOSP).

[Lullz]

@Abdul Muis

What if there will be several incompatible Android forks in the future? If Nokia decides to continue with the Meltemi-Android project, that might actually happen at some point.

[chithanh]

While they are member of the OHA, Nokia can only release code from Android on devices that pass official Android compatibility testing. So this seems very unlikely, unless Nokia decides to reimplement everything from scratch without even a line of AOSP code.

[Huber]

@Wayne: AOSP is based on GNU/LINUX and hence falls under the GPL (GNU Public License). Hence Google cannot nake it closed source.

What Google _CAN_ do is to start from scratch and create a Play Services-compatible OS which has its own license, though. And Google is doing exactly this, it is called "Project Fuchsia". See here: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/googles-fuchsia-smartphone-os-dumps-linux-has-a-wild-new-ui/

AOSP also _IS_ the full OS, you can use it without the PlayStore and the other Google Services by simply using another App Store like Amazon or F-Driod.

The problem is only that you don't have Google Maps, GMail, Google Drive and all the other stuff which isn't part of AOSP. Competing with this is very hard for everybody, just take the failure of the Amazon smartphone as an example. Of course it's not impossible, so let's see what the future brings.

[Huber]

Regarding the alleged "fragmentation":

First of all, it's not like Android would have problems regarding compatibility between different versions, so customers are hardly affected. Except regarding security patches, of course.

But here also the carriers are to blame, which often don't roll out security patches for older phones despite getting an update from the OEM. This behaviour does not exactly encourage OEMs to provide updates either. As long as customers don't vote with their wallets, nothing will change.

Secondly, differences between different devices was an Android feature a few years ago. Lots of features were introduced by OEMs first and then a few years later by Google. Like tethering, dual windows, quick settings etc.

Android 7.X includes all of this natively, so there is less need for OEM-modified Android versions from the average customer's point of view now. But Android only became the dominant smartphone OS by allowing OEMs to differentiate their Android versions, so it's difficult to get the genie back into teh bottle now.

[zlutor]

if we knew HMD numbers...

what number would be quite OK? What would be magnificient?
what do you guess?

what to expect for Q3?

[Huber]

@Wayne: "To this day, brand NEW phones are still being sold with 4yr and older versions of Android."

Show me a single Android device which was released in 2017 and ships with a 4 year old Android version. I'm waiting...

[Lullz]

@Huber

He said selling new phones. Not releasing new phones.

[E.Casais]

The issue of "fragmentation", and what Wayne Brady describes are nothing new at all.

Developers faced the same difficulty with Java ME, and have been tackling the same problem with the mobile (and non-mobile) Web and browser fragmentation for ever. And before that, the issue popped up when developing software supporting the GUI of Unix, Windows and Mac.

Fragmentation will _always_ be with us. It is unavoidable when developing _universal_ services, i.e. those that do not just work on the recent version of one OS from one manufacturer offering a limited device selection with one form factor in one price category.

No, it is not easy, but that's life. Anyway, in the past two decades, techniques have been developed to cope with all that, and professionals rely upon them all the time. Mind the term "cope" -- not "solve".

[ReadandLearn]

'The iPhone created Android"

It was only completed when Nokias then CEO eFlop announced that something is burning and some company with a bad history will fix it.

That panicked everybody in the industry because they did not have the response for iPhone. Google did because the mole had seen one. The mole was member of the board at Apple from Google. Google did unfortunately understand how iPhone really works.

[ReadandLearn]

" Google did unfortunately understand how iPhone really works"

Shit. Did unfortunatelu not understand how iPhone really works and what the hell is Apple (Tim Cook) going to do with it.

[Gul Dukat]

Rewrote history?
Bad boy, bad boy

[Per "wertigon" Ekström]

Ok, as many of you already know, I keep track of Apple vs rest of world global average and also keep around a linear toy model for predictions. Why Apple vs rest? Because it is Android vs Rest now, so this is the only interesting border left to check.

Before Q1 results were known, predictions looked like this:

Quarter...Apple...World...Avg. Marketshare
Q1........51.7M...346.1M..14.47 %
Q2........42.5M...359.3M..14.44 %
Q3........47.4M...388.9M..14.39 %
Q4........78.0M...460.7M..14.13 %
Total....219.6M..1560.0M

Now that results are in, we get the new results as well as the new, revised predictions:

Quarter...Apple...World...Avg. Marketshare
Q1........50.8M...350.4M..14.36 %
Q2........41.8M...363.7M..14.25 %
Q3........46.6M...393.7M..14.10 %
Q4........76.6M...466.4M..13.70 %
Total....215.7M..1574.2M

So, Apple fared slightly worse than predicted, while Android did better than predicted. I'll keep doing these over the entire year, revising as new data comes in. Of course, if iPhone 8 becomes a new iPhone 6 moment, then Apple will once again regain market share, but right now it looks like they will slowly slide downward.

[Bree Van De Kamp]

@Per "wertigon" Ekström

My prediction of iPhone Q4 2017.

If new iPhone size is 4.7" & 5.5" and big bezel, 60Million tops.
If new iPhone size is 4", 4.7" & 5.5" and big bezel, 62Million tops.

If new iPhone size is bigger.
5"/5.2" 5.7"/5.9" and big bezel, 72Million tops,
4.2"/4.5", 5"/5.2" 5.7"/5.9" and big bezel, 80Million tops,

If new iPhone same size, but smaller size
4.7" & 5.5" and small bezel, 68Million tops.
4", 4.7" & 5.5" and small bezel, 70Million tops.

If new iPhone size is bigger.
5"/5.2" 5.7"/5.9" and small bezel, 75Million tops,
4.2"/4.5", 5"/5.2" 5.7"/5.9" and small bezel, 85Million tops,