Prepping for Q4 and Full Year Smartphone Stats. Some things to look out for

I'm waiting for the final numbers to come out, so we can do the full year 2017 smartphone numbers and the numbers for Q4. Before we have our final numbers, a lot of individual news stories are expected.

First, expect the story that 'Apple sells more than Samsung' smartphones. This is the Q4 measurement (calendar Quarter, so October-to-December, not fiscal quarter) and it looks like Apple will have outsold Sammy in Q4. That does NOT mean that Apple is in any way ahead in the race. On the contrary, Apple is FALLING FURTHER BEHIND Samsung. How can that be? It is the LAUNCH CYCLE for Apple's new model. Every Christmas Apple has its best quarter, then does ever worse the next three quarters. So the real measure is the FULL YEAR sales. For full year sales, Samsung held even in market share at 21%, while Apple is far behind, at 14% and Apple yes, fell one point in market share from 15% in 2016. So the gap between Samsung and Apple is INCREASING, Apple is FALLING FURTHER behind. But that is reality. Expect many silly business & tech writers, in the USA in particular, to fall for the story, that Apple is ahead of Samsung. Any honest reporting will tell readers that for full year sales, Samsung is safely ahead of Apple. Any 'fake news' reporting will only talk about Q4 numbers and leave the reader with the impression that Samsung has fallen.

Secondly, learn about the smartphone manufacturer company from China called BBK. We know that company for its smartphone brands Vivo, Oppo & OnePlus. I have counted those brands separately into our Top 10 in the past, but that is not fair, as we count Motorola brand sales into Lenovo sales, etc, so as a manufacturer, yes, BBK has to be counted where its individual brands are added together. A year ago, using that method, BBK was the world's third largest smartphone maker in year 2016, behind Apple and ahead of Huawei. Now, for 2017, BBK has passed Apple. There will be a separate story, that Apple has FALLEN TO THIRD.

So simultaneously we will hear stories that Apple is larger than Samsung, and that Apple has fallen from second rank to third rank in the smartphone races. Haha. And both are technically true statements.

But yes, expect to learn a lot more about BBK. And yes, it is the world's second-largest smartphone manufacturing conglomerate, behind only Samsung and ahead of Apple, Huawei, LG, Xiaomi and the others that we so much love to follow on this blog. And if you want to know more about who is this BBK and how did they 'suddenly' appear onto the scene, here is a great synopsis of the company, its founder and the history from DVD players and videogaming consoles to smartphones today, via Android Authority. Very good (and short) read.

Now on the individual brand races, where is the race? Samsung is flat for the year, keeping its 21% from the year before. Far above Apple who falls from 15% to 14% this past year. And who is rushing up to fight against Apple brand? It is Huawei, who again added a point of market share, and now globally sells 10% of all smartphones (vs 9% a year ago). Apple has lost one point every year last 3 years, while Huawei has gained a point each of the last 3 years. This trends suggests that next year (2019) we will see the iPhone at 12% and Huawei at 12% and the two big global smartphone makers will be literally neck-to-neck. By year 2020 Huawei will have passed Apple.

(and behind those two brands, we find the 3 BBK brands, Vivo, Oppo and OnePlus, of course, who combined are larger than either Apple or Huawei. And this year, BBK will start to approach Samsung for the title of top dog...)

Now a mathematical curiosity. It looks like we have a perfect symmetry in the top 3 (brand) race in smarthphones globally (annual numbers, of course). Samsung is 45% larger than number 2, Apple. And Apple is 45% larger than number 3 (Huawei). Haha .Nice symmetry there. But that won't last long. Samsung is holding steady at 21% market share. Apple is bleeding market share one point per year, and Huawei is catching up to Apple one point per year in market share. So in one year it will be more like Samsung ahead of Apple by 56% and Apple ahead of Huawei only by 21%.

BTW of the top 3 brands, we know Samsung's rough semi-official full year number, it is 320 million total smartphones sold (plus another 40 million dumbphones). And for Huawei, we know their official full year 2017 number at 153 million. Apple will end up somewhere near 220 million, maybe a bit under. BBK will be well above 250 million across their three brands.

Then in milestones to come. MASSIVE number is upon us, this Spring. I have Samsung cumulative shipments of smartphones lifetime at 1.9 Billion. We're passing 2.0 Billion cumulative Samsung brand smartphones shipped, sometime this Spring, probably this first quarter. I hope Samsung celebrates that 2 Billionth smartphone in some way. (for comparison, Apple at 1.3 Billion cumulative iPhones since 2007, Nokia next at 600 million smartphones lifetime, and Huawei is next, past 500 million already)

Meanwhile in the kiddie table. Where is Nokia's comeback? I am hoping some analysts will give some numbers on Nokia. For the full year they are well below half a percent as they only started to sell their smartphones to a broad market in the summer. But for Q4, they may well be above 1% market share already. I'd love to see some analyst quote a Nokia HMD smartphone unit count number so we'll have some visibility to that scale. I was expecting Nokia HMD to sell about 5.4 million. Hopefully we'll see some numbers too about that. Ok, with all that, lets await the various numbers.

Comments

[E.Casais]

Any idea where the other two Chinese multibrand players -- Transsion and Tinno -- will get a position in the top-10 when measured in aggregate terms?

[Abdul Muis]

I hope the story of BBK beat apple will be picked up by us journalist. It will make American wondering on why.

[Jim Glue]

Apple does not regularly win the Q4 crown - so I think it's a nice achievement. It's not like Samsung blew up their entire Note launch this year like last year. Apple's splitting it's launch into two premium lines...and releasing the top one with only 2 months left in the quarter....and STILL Apple beats Samsung? Not bad. Have we forgotten the hand ringing about how bad that strategy was? iPhone 8/8+ sales hampered, lack luster lines around the world at launch (but still, lines, all over the world)...as Apple Osborned (but not Eloped) the 8 by announcing but not delivering the iPhone X until later?

And...OMG...the PRICE of the iPhone X. Outrageous, remember? Not Tomi, he's long called for even more expensive iPhones (and cheaper). No props to Apple for doing just that? A new high end was pulled off successfully. Great sales. And Apple broadened the iPhone lineup from $349 to $1150. And it's working.

It's Samsung that's getting their hat handed to them in China and who's really beautiful Galaxy S and Note lines AREN'T taking back territory from Apple.

All while having no offerings in the part of the market where the vast majority of unit sales occur.

And while Apple (and Samsung's premium phones) hit the maturity wall first...the rate of growth for Android isn't anything like it use to be. The lengthening time of ownership of iPhones will become an industry wide trend as well. Samsung's iPhone-class business has cratered...while Apple's has merely leveled. Pretty damn good in my book.

Just think...Apple has forever been the loser and yet, by Tomi's numbers, Apple has sold twice the smartphones than Nokia ever has. Apple's current, active install base is right at the size of the entire sales of Nokia smartphones. That's not putting Nokia down. It's just showing the scale difference between then and now.

I do think it's fair to put BBK ahead of Apple. Apple is third place....selling iPhones at ASP over 3x as high as the ASP of Androids. Pretty damned good.

[john F.]

INDIA REPORT contradicts assumptions that iPhone X wouldn't sell well crushing all competitors

According to Counterpoint Research’s latest analysis on the Indian handset market, the premium smartphone segment was the second fastest growing segment (+20% YoY) in CY 2017

Apple is still the leader in the premium segment, capturing 47% share during Q4 2017 and 38% during CY 2017, driven by strong shipments of iPhone X and iPhone 7.

https://www.counterpointresearch.com/indian-premium-smartphone-segment-grew-20-annually-cy-2017/

oops!

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi John

What 'oops'? I've told many times on this blog, that the rich people in Emerging World markets will of course buy expensive phones. It is the MINISCULE size of that segment. Apple's TOTAL share of India smartphones is about 3% !!! So that suggests TOTAL premium market in India is about 6% or 7% of the market.

BTW Africa is very similar in size and shape of market, as India. Africa obviously is also larger than the US already. And iPhone is in similar shape on that whole continent where one in six humans alive live today.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[john F.]

Ah !

Oops is because some people have predicted a complete lack of interest for apple products in India. Wel,l if it's growing 20% a year, soon and before we know it apple will own most of the luxury/aspirational segment, many predicted failure, in this case, not you Tomi, readers of the blog,

If it goes the China way, even in a much smaller size, it will be significant for Apple and Apple alone, regardless market share.

[Per "wertigon" Ekström]

@John F.

3% of 1 billion is still a lot of customers (30M to be precise), but will hardly add much to the Apple line in terms of Market share.

If Apple utterly dominates the top segment, that is very bad news for their long term viability, since they will be increasingly seen as that "goofy" snob company that refuses to play ball with the rest of the world (e.g. Android). That kind of image will hurt their App Store hard in the developer market. It will cause a lot of resentment e.g. devs will not be happy.

You will know Apple is in deep trouble when you can develop iOS apps without a Mac. We're a few years from that point, but I make a bold prediction it will happen before 2025.

[Jim Glue]

@Per - you are right. Not that 30M means NOTHING in market share...but that even in India, Apple utterly dominates the ONLY segment they participate in. And as such, Apple's market will fall as long as the cheap end of the market is where the growth is. Growth in unit sales...pretty much nothing else. Well, unit sales and free app downloads.

To the best of their ability, the Android crowd has not been able to recover ground in the high end. They continue to bleed to the lower tiers of Android and to the iPhone.

So what? Apple still loses. Sure. But...it allows Apple's platform to still be the one where the most opportunity is for developers to make money. Apple and Android both have significant are in the "money to be made supporting smartphone ecosystems". The "money to be made" is not evenly divided up by unit market share. I don't know if this is a new thing, or that such has happened before. Certainly not with PC's. There is money to be made supporting Linux on the server, Windows on both server and desktop, and Mac on desktop. But the lion share of money to be made supporting a platform on desktop goes to the same platform that has the unit market share dominance.

[Jim Glue]

Hi Per,

I think you are wrong about your Mac statement. I think it's true that the need for Macs to develop iOS apps has been a huge boon to the Mac market. I am a prime example. Never had a Mac until I needed to do iOS work...but then I quickly grew to prefer the Mac.

Even if iOS development was opened up on PC's....it's both too late and too unimportant. Too late in that Macs are already getting into corporations based on total cost of ownership and due to employees opting for Macs when given a choice.

The "too unimportant" is about how small Macs are in terms of revenue compared to the rest of Apple's businesses.

[Wayneborean]

Oh crap, the loonies are at it again.

[john F.]

@Per

3% of 1 billion is still a lot of customers (30M to be precise), but will hardly add much to the Apple line in terms of Market share.

Umm OK, you didn't read my post till the end ... here it is

it will be significant for Apple and Apple alone, regardless market share.

3-4 years from now it will be like 50 million phones a year, peanuts for indue huge for Apple .... regardless of market share.

[Huber]

I'd love to see an analysis of the "ultra premium" market. We had a couple of phones in 2017 which were north of €1000 here. The iPhone X, Note 8, SGS8+, Pixel 2 XL...

This is in contrast to the falling prices on the mid- and high-end. "Premium" smartphones seem to become more expensive...

Probably it has something to do with contracts: I thought that the Pixel 2 XL is ridiculously overpriced when it was released, but at the end it turned out that T-Mobile Germany doesn't carry One Plus. So I took the Pixel 2 XL 128GB with contract for €400 instead of buying the One Plus 5T for €550 without contract.

This of course is just anecdotal evidence, but perhaps it plays some role.

Other than that, I am quite surprised about the price hike...

[Huber]

Edit:

It should read "This is in contrast to the falling prices on the mid- and _LOW_-end. "Premium" smartphones seem to become more expensive..."

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Gang

iResults blog is up.. I'm sure you want to talk there. No discussion about Apple profits or share price..

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Johnnie Hougaard Nielsen]

A funny thing about the BBK success story is that the brand OnePlus managed to trick lots of Android fanboys into thinking of it as a small struggling "hero" brand, which gets good sales despite not having the financial strength of the big boys. Someone in China must be having a good laugh all the way to the bank over such gullibility :-)

Don't get me wrong, OnePlus have good devices for the price, but that's the usual story about Chinese brands not focusing on the segment seeing a high price as a primary desirable feature, like lots of Apple buyers.

[Sonan]

Sony sold 4 million phones on Q4. Nokia might have bypassed Sony already.

[Teemu]

@Tomi
Finland - country of 5 million people - has now 10 000 000 mobile subscriptions (and some other stats):
https://www.hs.fi/talous/art-2000005551305.html?ref=rss

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Sonan

Thanks! I mentioned the Sony number in the new blog I just posted - and thanked you. Yeah it looks like Nokia has already passed one of its old dear rivals, on the way back.. (using the brand new Counterpoint number for Nokia HMD at 4.15M units sold in Q4)

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Abdul Muis]

KGI just say that Apple will sell 100 million 6" iPhone in 2018. I think in 2018, more than 60% of screen size will be about 5.7" - 6.0"

[Per "wertigon" Ekström]

@Tomi:

I know you're a busy guy and all, but any news on the Q4/FY 2017 report? :)