Market data & competition.
At least 22k apps were added in December. It looks like we’re on track for Jobs to announce 150k apps by the time of the tablet announcement. By one count, 147k apps have already been published to the App store.
The last 50k apps will have taken 3 months. Download rate now is about 300 apps per second.
UPDATE: Jobs announced 140k apps on Jan 27.
A loose translation:
France Telecom CEO Didier Lombard:
Remember that at Christmas, 77% of telephones with a fixed-rate tariff that Orange sold were iPhones! It’s amazing. I cannot say why so many other mobile telephone manufacturers have fallen so far behind and have been unable to catch-up.
I am still trying to get my head around this data point. Is it an anomaly? Is France unique or is this a Christmas-only phenomenon? Other data points also showed that iPhone is phenomenally popular in France, but this is unheard of. Would broad availability in the US also lead to >50% market share of all phones sold? Could the possibility of runaway, iPod-like, Apple monopoly of the sector be contemplated? Anecdotally, I also observed a large number of iPhones while in Terminal 3 at Heathrow.
As I said, Apple will launch an ad platform for the iPhone.
I think it’s a certainty that Apple will introduce an ad serving platform for the iPhone (and any tablet) in 2010. This will amount to a checkbox that developers will check when submitting their app to the store. Doing so will allow Apple to place ads on the app in return for a check in the mail to the developer for the impressions.
More than half of the 3.5 million smartphones shipping to France this year should be iPhone variant, while Apple should account for about 20 percent of the entire cellphone market’s revenue. The company’s popularity will have helped smartphones as a whole more than double their share of France from 7 percent in 2008 to 16 percent this year.
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/12/29/as.many.as.2m.iphones.in.france.for.2009/
My bet is we’ll see the same thing in Korea. In both Japan and Korea the incumbents mounted campaigns against the iPhone and mustered means at their disposal (including major newspapers, TV and government agencies) to hinder Apple’s entry.
The reality however is that captive customers in those economies have always yearned for better products. There will always be a segment of the population that is informed about alternatives and will buy what works, at the expense of purchase decisions based on nationalism. It’s that group which will influence behavior over time.
This is how Toyota won against GM in the US.
http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/12/17/apple.crushing.sharp.willcom.in.japan/
This is active users in the US only.
iPhone now tops WinMo and is second only to RIM. The only line that is going down is the dumbphone category which lost 10 million users.
Those users were mostly switched to RIM and Apple. RIM gained about 4.3 million users and Apple gained about 3.5 million.
Android user base still lowest of all platforms and increased by about 0.6 million. They are likely to beat Palm however next few quarters. At this rate however it’s very hard to see an installed base that is going to challenge Apple for a long time.
Palm gained 0.44 million. Symbian gained 0.41 million. WinMo gained 0.3 million.
With a 1.4 multiplier for iPod Touch, the platform would have 12.5 million users, pretty near RIM’s base. We might see that tipping over next quarter.
http://www.fiercedeveloper.com/pages/what-were-top-smartphone-operating-systems-october-numbers
As I mentioned, I expect the green line to extend above 100 million in 3 to 4 quarters from where it currently ends.
On April 9th, 2007 Apple announced that the 100 millionth iPod had been sold, making the iPod the fastest selling music player in history. The first iPod was sold five and a half years earlier, in November 2001.
Three months after that 100 millionth iPod, Apple sold the first iPhone.
My prediction is that sometime next year Apple will announce the 100 millionth iPhone OS device sold, making the iPhone the fastest selling platform in history. The iPhone will have been on the market for three years.
As of now there are at least 57 million iPhone/iPod touch devices in the field. This season there are likely to be over 15 million more sold. The bar to clear is therefore 28 million next year which seems achievable by Q3.
It goes without saying that 100 million contiguously addressable devices makes it the largest such device platform, but it may make it so by an order of magnitude.
