Mobile Computing Industry
The following map shows the countries where iTunes Apps are available.
It represents 123 countries. It also shows where the iPhone is currently available.
The following map shows the countries where iTunes music can be purchased. Continue reading “The TV store”
Here are the highlights from RIM’s latest quarter:
Given the channel fill with a new product, the device business was marginal at best. The company obtained -1% growth y/y in units but 31% sequential growth from a transitional quarter. The average selling price (inclusive of service revenues) is $354 and about $280 excluding service revenues. I estimate that operating margins have dropped to about 11%. Not a good story, but one we have been warned to expect.
But a crucial new twist to the story is that RIM announced that they don’t expect new BlackBerry 10 devices until late next year. That came as a surprise and the stock sold off significantly, valuing the company at well below book value.
Stepping back, the biggest surprise is that the company seems to have had no plan for sustaining itself.
Let me explain. Continue reading “The parable of RIM”
Tomi Ahonen has compiled a fascinating data set on 42 major countries’ smartphone penetration rates. The compilation is based on Netsize Guide, Informa, Google and Ipsos data. It is a complex sample with multiple possible sources of error (read the post for the caveats.) However, this is a breakthrough. It’s the first time I’ve seen this level of detail at a country level in the public domain.
I maintain visualizations of ITU data which shows overall mobile consumption and broadband consumption and penetration. In order to maintain a consistent basis of comparison, I prefer to use ITU’s measure of consumption which is “subscriptions” rather than “population”. The ITU derives this measure because mobile operators think of points of connection (subs) rather than people as the measure of consumption. This makes some sense because connections are what are monetized–not people.
So the first piece of analysis is to show this measure of penetration (smartphones as a percent of subscriptions) for the 42 sampled countries.
This view shows which countries “lead” adoption in terms of penetration. It shows that the US is quite high in the ranking and the most penetrated “large” country.
This is highlighted by the following chart which shows penetration of smartphones vs. total subscriptions with bubble size representing population size. Continue reading “Global smartphone penetration nearing 10%”
It has no price and hence there are no ways markets can signal demand or value creation. Furthermore, Android is not being offered to users like the iPhone. Android’s “customers” are phone vendors who package the software with additional value-added hardware and sell the combination to operators or distributors who then package it further with services and offer the total to end users.
So obviously, comparisons between Android and iPhone center on instances of Android used in real products and the “market performance” of Android therefore relies on these proxies for Android — the aggregate sum of products that have some form of Android in use.
I wrote this in response to a very short brief: “We’re looking for an editorial piece that comes down on either side of the debate of iPhone vs. Android”. The challenge I saw was on the approach to the question of “iPhone vs. Android”. I chose to measure value creation by the means available to shareholders.
Read more here: Horace Dediu Android Vs. iPhone on BusinessInsider.com
[I am posting this here in the hope that comments will accrue to this forum as well.]
Warning: This requires Flash.
Try the following settings:
Note the “Vendor data” tab where you can see the source data and options for different chart types (upper right of chart).
Continue reading “Visualizing Mobile Phone Vendor Performance Through Motion Charts”
On October 27th, Nintendo published half year results for the fiscal year ending in March 2012. Management stated that the company lost over $900 million with a negative outlook. Nintendo cited weaker than expected sales of Nintendo DS hardware and 3DS software and Yen appreciation as the main reasons for the miss. Is this the end of Nintendo?
Before we look more closely, here is a quick summary: The company is exclusively involved in selling game hardware and software. Their console platform is the Nintendo Wii, which will be followed by the Wii U late in 2012. The Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS are the company’s portable game consoles. The Wii and the DS are nearing the end of their product cycles. On the software side, the company is known for gaming titles such as Super Mario and Zelda. Nintendo also pioneered the licensing model to allow third-party developers to produce games for its hardware products.
I recently posted a comparison between the profit capture of phone vendors in 2007 and the most recent quarter:
The idea was to show what a disruption looks like. A phenomenon where an entrant with none of the advantages of incumbency takes the profits away from companies privileged with ideal market access and knowledge.
The view of profit shift is the ideal view since it shows the “bottom line” impact and thus the denouement rather than more nuanced sub-plot. However, we don’t always have access to profitability data. Sometimes we only have access to revenue estimates.
Fortunately revenues have a similar story and are often a good proxy. Consider how the evolution of revenue shares occurred in the same market: Continue reading “Pac-Man”
comScore published the latest data regarding US smartphone installed base. To summarize:
Of the platforms available, Android reached Continue reading “The US smartphone landscape”
As shown in the yesterday’s post, in the third quarter, overall mobile phone profitability declined. The eight vendors I use as a proxy showed a total net profit of $8.51 billion, down slightly from $8.57 billion and a drop of $9.01 billion in the first quarter.
Overall, the industry dropped by 1% sequentially but is still up 30% over last year and has a 20% compounded growth rate over a three year period.
To illustrate the performance in terms of profit, pricing, volumes and margins, I developed the following chart. Continue reading “The end of the independent phone brand”
A few years ago, around the middle of the last decade, the mobile phone market was characterized by the rivalry between a few established vendors. These were Nokia, Samsung, LG, Motorola and Sony Ericsson. These incumbent companies had a broad portfolio of devices including smartphones and feature phones and basic phones. Many also sold networking equipment and were deeply engaged with their customers, network operators.
There was also a set of entrants who offered only smartphones. They were quirky. HTC was a a prominent “ODM” or original design manufacturer who built phones for companies who added their brands and sold and supported the product. HTC made phones and PDAs for operator brands and for some large PC companies. It also began to sell phones under its own brand. RIM was also offering products that had evolved from pagers into email appliances with added voice capabilities. But RIM’s products were not very good as phones. Voice was so poorly integrated that many people carried both a BlackBerry and a voice phone. Then there was Palm with something called a Treo which promised many things but did not quite deliver.
In 2007 something happened which changed the industry. It took a few years to even realize it was happening but by the time it was obvious, it had changed to such a degree that huge companies found themselves in financial distress. This chart illustrates the effect.
In a few short years Continue reading “Revolutionary User Interfaces”
