Market Share Analysis: Mobile Phones, Worldwide, 4Q12 and 2012

Android was top with 144.7m smartphones sold, for a 69.7% market share. iOS ranks second with 43.5m iPhones and a 20.9% share. Gartner has BlackBerry in third place (7.3m sales / 3.5% share) and Windows Phone in fourth (6.2m / 3%) but with the former falling considerably year-on-year, and the latter growing.

“2013 will be the year of the rise of the third ecosystem as the battle between the new BlackBerry 10 and Windows Phone intensifies,” predicts Gartner.

 

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 4Q12 (000s of Units)

 

Operating System	4Q12  Units	4Q12 Market Share (%)	4Q11  Units	4Q11 Market Share (%)
Android	144,720.3	69.7	77,054.2	51.3
iOS	43,457.4	20.9	35,456.0	23.6
Research In Motion	7,333.0	3.5	13,184.5	8.8
Microsoft	6,185.5	3.0	2,759.0	1.8
Bada	2,684.0	1.3	3,111.3	2.1
Symbian	2,569.1	1.2	17,458.4	11.6
Others	713.1	0.3	1,166.5	0.8
Total	207,662.4	100.0	150,189.9	100.0

 

Source: Gartner (February 2013) 

 

 

Posted via email from cjlambert's posterous

Eating your own beats getting eaten.

I had a bit of a brain jolt this morning when I saw Apple CEO Tim Cook's comments on cannibalisation as part of the Q113 earnings call today. 

“I see cannibalisation as a huge opportunity for us,” Cook said. “Our core philosophy is to never fear cannibalisation. If we don’t do it, someone else will. We know that iPhone has cannibalised some of our iPod business. That doesn’t worry us."

Why waste resource protecting territory that your competitor has under full attack and customers don't want? Keep going and take new ground with more advanced products as the technology and user preference develops.

It's so damn obvious I can't believe the years I've sat in meetings nodding along to 'evils of cannibalisation' pep talks. 

My first job was in FMCG sales and I remember we had to sell a new Weight Watchers branded product into the supermarkets. It was a fantastic product. Dripping chocolaty goodness with sexy packaging and hardly any calories. The issue was, we already had a plain old 'Lite' product that was doing quite well and we weren't allowed to cannibalise it.  Our instruction was to create new shelf space and not take any facings off the existing diet product. 

When presented with the Weight Watchers sample, buyers would always point at the 'Lite' product on the shelf and say: "so we don't need that one?"

All the 'anti-cannibalisation' tactic did was create confusion and slow down the adoption of the new shiny product. In the meantime. competitors could refine their their own 'Lite' offers by copying ours and gain more market share by picking off our older, weaker incumbent. 

Eating your own might sound primitive but it does keep you at the top of the food chain. Something Apple is very good at. 

 

Posted via email from cjlambert's posterous

Samsung and Android continue US mobile dominance

With Apple's prowess in marketing it's easy forget what a critical role the carrier plays in manufacturer and platform market dominance. 

Google touts 'choice' as its big advantage over Apple with more carriers, manufacturers and handsets. 

Recent survey data from comScore shows that Samsung is still the leading OEM brand in the US market with 25.6% of US mobile subscribers, followed by LG and then Apple. 

Google Android is the number one smartphone platform with over the half the market share (Apple has just over one third). 

 

Top Mobile OEMs 3 Month Avg. Ending Jul. 2012 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Apr. 2012 Total U.S. Mobile Subscribers (Smartphone & Non-Smartphone) Ages 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Share (%) of Mobile Subscribers
	Apr-12	Jul-12	Point Change
Total Mobile Subscribers	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Samsung	25.9%	25.6%	-0.3
LG	19.2%	18.4%	-0.8
Apple	14.4%	16.3%	1.9
Motorola	12.5%	11.2%	-1.3
HTC	6.0%	6.4%	0.4

Smartphone Platform Market Share

More than 114 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in July, up 7 percent versus April. Google Android ranked as the top smartphone platform with 52.2 percent market share (up 1.4 percentage points), while Apple’s share increased 2 percentage points to 33.4 percent. RIM ranked third with 9.5 percent share, followed by Microsoft (3.6 percent) and Symbian (0.8 percent).

Top Smartphone Platforms 3 Month Avg. Ending Jul. 2012 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Apr. 2012 Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Ages 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers
	Apr-12	Jul-12	Point Change
Total Smartphone Subscribers	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Google	50.8%	52.2%	1.4
Apple	31.4%	33.4%	2.0
RIM	11.6%	9.5%	-2.1
Microsoft	4.0%	3.6%	-0.4
Symbian	1.3%	0.8%	-0.5

 

Posted via email from cjlambert's posterous