Q3 Smartphone Market Shares and Prelim Estimate of Full Year 2017 Top 5 (plus installed base as always)

Time for some numbers. The average of the big analyst houses gives us a count of total smartphone market in Q3 globally of 383.1 million units. That is up 3% vs one year ago and up 7% vs the previous quarter ie Q2. We are on pace for something around 1.6B total smartphones sold this year, perhaps a bit under. The migration rate of new phone sales to smartphones is now at 82%. Because we have 3 quarters of data and the industry is relatively stable, I can also give you a preliminary projection for full year market shares (Top 5).

So lets do the Top 10. This is what the market looked like in the July-Sept quarter for 2017.

BIGGEST SMARTPHONE MANUFACTURERS BY UNIT SALES IN Q3 2017

Rank . . . Manufacturer . Units . . . Market Share . Was Q2 2017 
1 (1) . . . Samsung . . . .  83.4 M . . 21.8% . . . . . . . ( 22.5% ) 
2 (2) . . . Apple  . . . . . . . 46.7 M . . 12.2% . . . . . . . ( 11.5% ) 
3 (3) . . . Huawei  . . . . . . 39.1 M . . 10.2% . . . . . . . ( 10.6% ) 
4 (4) . . . Oppo . . . . . . . . 33.4 M . . . 8.7% . . . . . . . (   7.8% )
5 (5)  . . . Xiaomi . . . . . .  27.9 M . . . 7.3% . . . . . . . (  6.5% ) 
6 (6) . . . Vivo  . . . . . . . . 26.5 M . . . 6.9% . . . . . . . (   6.0% ) 
7 (7) . . . ZTE  . . . . . . . . 16.6 M . . . 4.3% . . . . . . . (   5.2% )
8 (8) . . . LG . . . . . . . .  . 13.7 M . . . 3.6% . . . . . . . (   3.7% ) 
9 (9) . . . Lenovo .  . . . . . 12.5 M . . . 3.3% . . . . . . . (   3.1% )
10 (10) . Gionee . . . . . . .10.1 M . . . 2.6% . . . . . . .  (   2.6% )
Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73.2 M
TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383.1 M

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 24 Nov 2017, based on manufacturer and industry data
This table may be freely shared


So chart looks the same as in Q2. No changes in any positions (I don't remember that happening ever before since we started monitoring the 'bloodbath' on a quarterly basis at the start of this decade). Goes even more to show that this industry is now stable and 'boring'...

Global OS market share is Android minus iOS. The rest of OS is now under 0.5% so it is rounded off to zero. So easy math. Android is now 87.8% and iOS is 12.2% for this quarter.

As to Installed Base? That is starting to look a lot like Christmas... ie its starting to mimick the situation in new sales for OS.. slowly Android approaches its new sales share and Apple slowly reclines to near its new sales levels, and the other last remaining OS platforms die out even in installed base.

SMARTPHONE INSTALLED BASE AT END OF SEPTEMBER 2017 BY OPERATING SYSTEM

Rank . OS Platform . . . . . . . . . . Units Q3 . . . Market share  Was Q2 2017
1 . . . . All Android . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,660 M . . . 82 % . . . . . . ( 81 %)  
a . . . . . . Pure Android/Play . . . . 1,796 M . . . 55% . . . . . . ( 55%)
b . . . . . . Forked Anroid/AOSP . . . 864 M . . . 27% . . . . . . ( 26%)
2 . . . . iOS  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 589 M . . . 18 % . . . . . . ( 19 %) 
Others  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 M  . . . . 0 % . . . . . . (   1 %)
TOTAL Installed Base . 3,261 M smartphones (ie 3.3 Billion) in use at end of Q3, 2017

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 24 Nov 2017, based on manufacturer and industry data
This table may be freely shared


Yeah 82/18 is the current split of the 'OS war'. New sales is about 85/15. Apple iPhones had a peak of about 20% market share and this slow decline reflects partly that decline. It is slower than mathematically 'should be' because used iPhones have a better resale market than used generic Android smartphones so the iOS installed base is likely to remain a few points above the actual sales levels of recent 3 years or so. I foresee this pattern to remain for the foreseeable future (say next 5 years at least). If iPhone sells in 13% to 15% range for next few years, then its installed base can be in the 15% to 17% range. The lion's share will of course be Android. Apple's iOS is destined to same niche market future as Mac OS was in PC wars. Most developers will soon only do Android with iOS the possible secondary involvement. This will particularly be true in the 5/6th of the world market where most phones are sold (India just passed the US as a smartphone market, Apple's share in the US is 30%, in India it is 3% - that in a nutshell explains the predicament for Apple - the world growth is all in the Emerging World and iPhones are way too expensive to maintain share there. This means iOS has lost the war and will soon only be a 'rich market OS' while Android is the only 'global' reach market).

PROJECTION FOR FULL YEAR 2017

Lets also take the full year 2017. Since we have 3 quarters of data already, and we can see the market is remarkably stable, I can give a preliminary projection for full year 2017 smartphone market shares. I see it like this:

PRELIMINARY TOP 5 SMARTPHONE UNIT SALES FULL YEAR 2017
(Projection in November 2017)

Rank . . . Manufacturer . Market Share . Was 2016
1 (1) . . . Samsung . . . .  21% . . . . . . . ( 20.8% ) 
2 (2) . . . Apple  . . . . . . . 14% . . . . . . . ( 14.5% ) 
3 (3) . . . Huawei  . . . . . .10% . . . . . . . (   9.4% ) 
4 (4) . . . Oppo . . . . . . . . . 8% . . . . . . . (   6.1% )
5 (6) . . . Vivo  . . . . . . . .  . 6% . . . . . . . (   4.9% ) 

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Projection 24 Nov 2017, based on manufacturer and industry data and TomiAhonen Consulting industry forecasting model.
This table may be freely shared

That is what the market looks like to me, at the end of Q3. If you were wondering who was at Number 5 that I see dropping behind Vivo? That is Xiaomi. They'll be close but I give 5th rank to Vivo (that is also the least confident of these 5 rankings, the others in the Top 4 are pretty well locked in stone and their market shares will not differ more than by one point at the most from how I see it now).

As always, this info may be freely shared.

Comments

[James]

@Jim

> Apple’s optimizing performance to match the power of the battery is a good thing

This is a bad thing. Apple has not informed the users about this. What if Tesla would slow its car in order to match the power of the battery without telling its customers?

This is deceptive, immoral and unethical. Also this is not so legal thing to do in US and outside of US and as expected Apple got sued about it.

http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2017/12/apple-hit-with-a-125-million-class-action-in-israel-over-purposely-slowing-iphones.html

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/apple-lawsuit-slow-iphones_us_5a3edcd6e4b0b0e5a7a293fc?utm_hp_ref=apple

And after all Face Id is inferior to Touch Id.

http://bgr.com/2017/12/25/iphone-x-face-id-family-purchases-touch-id/

[James]

@Tomi

Nokia QWERTY Phone Receives Bluetooth SIG Certification: Report

https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/nokia-qwerty-smartphone-bluetooth-sig-certification-1791952

[Vinod]

Honor 9 lite is best smartphone with 4 camera, Check this out