Category: Industry

Today’s chart: the percent of smartphones as part of the total phones sold for three vendors vendors that have traditionally sold a large portion of voice-oriented phones.

As these vendors switch to a higher mix of smartphones, their distribution network will ensure a continuing surge in overall smartphone penetration.

Most of Samsung’s increase has come in the last two quarters. Note also the rate of growth in Nokia’s mix. Motorola and Samsung owe it all to Android.

Following-up on the profitability discussion for the top eight vendors, I built a chart to show estimated profit capture from smartphones, further dividing the vendors into inter-dependent (own OS) and modular (licensed OS)[1]. Continue reading “How much profit did vendors capture from Android-powered phones?”

In previous posts I detailed shares for units, sales and profits. I also offered different ways to look at the data like rankings and profit “area” maps.

This article is about the absolute numbers. What is the total market in terms of units sold, sales and operating profits.

The time frame remains from the second quarter in 2007 to the third quarter of 2010. The same eight vendors are analyzed (with “Other” available for units analysis only). Continue reading “Absolute value: the handset market stacked”

Take a look at this chart. It combines the known shipment data with the total market size for smartphones as defined by Canalys.

Knowing the platform/vendor make-up we can estimate the percent of the market that was Android. Continue reading “Estimating Android market share for the third quarter”

There is some confusion with the latest Canalys teaser press release. The implication is that Apple has lost smartphone platform share due to the Android surge.

Using the published data, it’s easy to see that Apple has continued to increase share in both smartphones and handsets as a whole.

I used green bars to represent quarterly share of smartphones and blue bars to represent quarterly share of all phones.

I used orange line to show trailing four quarters (TTM) share in regular phones and red for smartphones. Continue reading “iPhone's smartphone share continues to rise”

In the mobile phone industry, and indeed, in most technology sectors, price decline is a fact of life. Component prices tend to drop while their performance increases. This rapid obsolescence drives prices down constantly. Competition also plays a part as undifferentiated products are rapidly imitated.

This phenomenon has its own term: price erosion. It’s built into most business plans and forecasts.

But how real is it? What are the implications in terms of market share if one accelerates price erosion or reverses it?

This chart shows the average selling price for all the vendors whose data I maintain over a period of time. Continue reading “What's the opposite of price erosion?”

The following chart shows the third quarter’s profitability of eight top phone vendors as a measure of phones sold multiplied by profit per phone. Continue reading “Making it up in volume? How to view unit profitability vs. volume in handsets”

Change in top mobile phone vendor market, sales and profit shares rank over time: Continue reading “Apple as mobile phone vendor: First in profit, second in sales and fourth in units”