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You are here: MacNN Forums > News > Mac News > Gartner: Apple rises, Samsung drops in worldwide phone share

Gartner: Apple rises, Samsung drops in worldwide phone share
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NewsPoster
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Nov 18, 2015, 06:50 PM
 
The latest report by analyst firm Gartner shows Apple's iOS platform increasing its worldwide share to 13.1 percent in the September quarter, an increase in percentage points of 0.6 year-over-year, while Samsung's larger share slipped 0.2 points to 23.7 percent. Though the Android platform as a whole continues to be dominant worldwide -- growing 1.4 percent over the past year to 84.7 percent share -- the rise is seen as having mostly come from Windows Phone losses.

Interestingly, Gartner believes Apple sold 46 million iPhones to end users worldwide in fiscal Q4 -- all that it shipped to vendors, though Apple reported sales of over 48 million for the same period, leading some to question the accuracy of Gartner's figures. Apple is the only company that actually report final sales figures; Android manufacturers don't generally provide any information beyond shipments to vendors, a portion of which are inevitably returned. The discrepancy can be partially explained by assuming that Gartner did not count any existing inventory in the totals.



Apple and Chinese phone maker Huawei were the only two companies in Gartner's survey to show year-over-year growth, with the latter jumping 50 percent in shipments to vendors to 7.7 percent from 5.2 percent. Windows Phone plummeted from 3.0 percent worldwide share to just 1.7 percent, while BlackBerry saw more than half of its 0.8 share disappear by the end of Q4 to 0.3 percent.

Although platform growth by Android outpaced iOS, there is some concern among analysts that the growth appears to come mostly from Windows Phone and BlackBerry defections, while Apple is reporting record Android "switcher" rates and success in converting both switchers and first-time smartphone buyers in developing markets. Apple's numbers were helped by both switchers and the inclusion of China as a launch-day market for the newest iPhones this year.



Apple also strongly dominates the premium sector of the smartphone industry, as well has collecting nearly all of the profit to be made in it. On the heels of a recent report that Apple now claims 94 percent (out of 105 percent, adding the losses from competitors to the overall potential pie), iOS sales to end users grew at a rate of 21 percent year-over-year.

"The availability of affordable smartphones in emerging markets saw consumers upgrade their 'feature phones' to smartphones more quickly because of the small price gap," said Gartner Research Director Anshul Gupta. "Smartphone sales in emerging markets rose to 259.7 million in the third quarter of 2015 -- an 18.4 percent growth over the third quarter of 2014 -- while sales in mature markets saw growth of just 8.2 percent over the same period."



The overall market for smartphones grew 15.5 percent over the year-ago quarter to 353 million units, a reflection of the appetite for the technology in developing markets. Worldwide sales of all kinds of mobile phones, however, was only up 3.7 percent from 2014. Vendors in developing markets that offered both types of phones tended to do well -- such as India's Micromax, which doubled its worldwide share to over 12 million units sold despite operating only in the India market. Likewise, Chinese vendors Huawei and Xiaomi saw growth.

Lenovo may have taken the biggest hit in terms of sales, though it was not the steepest drop on paper. The company went from 21.5 million units sold to 17.6 million, but Motorola Mobile's sales from the third calendar quarter of 2014 through to the September quarter of 2015 were blended into the result due to Lenovo's takeover of the company.



While Samsung shrank in terms of annual shipments of smartphones, it does continue to ship more than double the number of overall phones (both smart and feature) compared to Apple, falling to 83.59 million in September compared to Apple's 46 million units. Worryingly for the company, however, was that the drop came on the heels of the August release of its latest flagship products, the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge, which did little to stop the company's ongoing smartphone slide.
( Last edited by NewsPoster; Nov 18, 2015 at 09:58 PM. )
     
climacs
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Nov 18, 2015, 07:53 PM
 
OK pardon me while I get this bit of pedanticism over innumeracy off my chest. "The latest report by analyst firm Gartner shows Apple's iOS platform increasing its worldwide share to 13.1 percent in the September quarter, a rise of 0.6 percent year-over-year, while Samsung's larger share slipped 0.2 points to 23.7 percent."

I'm pretty sure you meant to communicate that iOS' share rose from 12.5% to 13.1%. That's a rise of 0.6 percentage points (or points for short). It's not a rise of 0.6 percent. That would have been around 0.07 percentage points, not significant at all.

You got it exactly right when describing Samsung's share as slipping 0.2 points.
     
climacs
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Nov 18, 2015, 07:59 PM
 
There is much to gloat about in this report for iPhone/Apple fans. There is no way AAPL should be under $140/share. Yes, Apple mostly lives and dies by the iPhone but - just like the iPod franchise - there is absolutely no rational reason to fear that Apple is somehow doomed to lose its grip on this market, there is still plenty of room to grow and build upon.
     
prl99
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Nov 18, 2015, 09:21 PM
 
We all know that the price of gasoline has nothing to do with the price of oil or the cost of producing it, it all has to do with the gamblers setting the spot price of gasoline. Comparing Apple to AAPL is the same thing. Apple will survive because people buy their products while AAPL will go up and down depending on how Wall Street wants it to go. One little rumor today (Goldman) and AAPL goes back up 3%. Did Apple sell 3% more product today? Probably not.
     
Charles Martin
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Nov 18, 2015, 09:57 PM
 
Climacs: you are completely correct, thanks for pointing that out.
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jdonahoe
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Nov 19, 2015, 11:52 AM
 
How does Microsoft sell 30 million phones and have 1.7% of the market overall? Should that be Motorola?

Also, in table 3, Samsung's percentage should be lower with 102.063 units sold. Just saying.....
     
Steve Wilkinson
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Nov 19, 2015, 12:02 PM
 
Another thing to keep in mind is actual usage. In addition to a sold vs shipped disparity, Android phones also seem less used, on the whole. When you look at metrics like ad revenue, or podcast subscriptions... even often website traffic, it becomes clear that Apple devices, at least, seem to engage the world much more than Android devices. (For example, podcast listening hovers at about a 5:1, Apple/Android ratio... we'll see if Google jump into this with their store helps, or not.)

I'm not sure if this is because so many Androids are sold at lower price points where people just wanted a phone, but got the 'smart' along with it anyway. Or, because Android users just don't use their phones to do these sorts of tasks (so they aren't detected). One would at least think the web-browsing stats would somewhat reflect the gap 'market share' but I've not seen that to be the case. I often wonder if there are just a lot of Android devices sitting in drawers and shoe-boxes out there.
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