In their monthly survey update on US phone usage, comScore reported that by the end of April 74.6 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones. In the same period a year ago only 48.1 million did. The percent of smartphone users out of total phone users has reached 32%. The following data points can also be … Continue reading “Peak RIM”
In the last post, I highlighted the difference between smartphones and non-smart device sales last quarter. The trajectory of share growth for smart devices would appear to have accelerated due to Android. The following charts show the evolution of smartphone vendors and platforms over the last few years. Like in the past, I used color … Continue reading “"Other" vendors sell 10% of Smartphones but 30% of voice-oriented phones”
The smartphone market grew to about 100 million phones last quarter. The volumes grew sequentially and as a result reached a new record share of 27% of total phones shipped. The chart on the left shows how this market evolved over the last few years. I’ve added each platform’s contribution. While much of the focus … Continue reading “Smartphones: the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?”
I produced two alternate views of the primary mobile phone brands in terms of volumes sold and operating profit in Q1. These views[1] allow a comparison by categorized competitors. I grouped dedicated smartphone vendors (SMART) vs. diversified and used color coding for profitability (blue colors indicate loss-making vendors). The same view is drawn for profitability. … Continue reading “Apple, RIM and HTC captured 75% of mobile phone operating profits in Q1”
The 200 most popular words used to describe the Asymco audience. The data is obtained from 4.3k twitter bios (approximately 55k total words). Generated using Wordle and a bit of Automator, grep, and BBEdit. Click/tap on image for more resolution. A summary of the attributes of the best audience on the web.
Speaking of boats, there were recent claims that the iPhone is “dead in the water“. As someone who has done some sailing I can say that being dead in the water is dangerous. Not only are you not going anywhere but you also don’t have steering control. It’s movement through the water that allows a … Continue reading “Measuring iPhone progress”
Apple’s last quarter’s sales growth was an impressive 83%. It was not as high as the 92% earnings rise because there was a higher mix of iPhones this quarter than in the past. The iPhone is the most profitable product in Apple’s portfolio so it impacts the gross margin significantly. The iPhone is, in fact, … Continue reading “When exceptional growth is not an exception”
The following interview was conducted by Bruno Ferrari a writer about technology for EPOCA, the weekly magazine of Organizações GLOBO, the largest Brazilian media company on March 30 2011. The article (published in Portuguese here) is an edited subset of the following exchange. Q: In your analyses, you mention tablets as part of a new era, the … Continue reading “A new era is only a new state of mind”
There is precious little data on Android units sold. There are estimates but no actual summary. Google themselves don’t seem to know as they don’t report sales, preferring to report “activations.” Assuming that activations means “unique activations of new devices” then we can draw some equivalency between Google’s reports and the reported units of iOS … Continue reading “The Android step function”
It’s a great misfortune that we don’t have data about the future. It makes it hard to tell what’s going to happen. It’s even harder because although sometimes we have data about the past, the past and the future don’t always look the same. Clearly that’s what makes predictions about mobile computing platforms tricky. Nothing … Continue reading “The pitfall in platform predictions”
