iPhone suffers as Android buoys Linux cause
Summary
According to Gartner, the iPhone saw a quarter-on-quarter sales decline in Q4 2008 but held on to 3rd place in smartphone market share.
Topics
Google's open mobile OS platform Android is buoying the fortunes of Linux-powered smartphones. The news for Apple's iPhone, however, is not so good.
According to analyst house Gartner, the iPhone saw a quarter-on-quarter sales decline in Q4 08 as the device took 10.7 per cent share of the smartphone market, compared to 12.9 per cent share the previous quarter.
Despite its decline in market share, the iPhone-maker held onto its third place global ranking among smartphone makers - behind first-placed Nokia with 40.8 per cent share and BlackBerry-maker RIM with 19.5 per cent.
HTC - which makes the Google-powered G1 Android device - came fourth, with 4.3 per cent market share; followed by Samsung (4.2 per cent) which made its debut in the top five vendors, usurping Sharp in the process.
Linux took 8.4 per cent marketshare of smartphone OSes in Q4 08, compared to 7.2 per cent the previous quarter - an increase of 19.4 per cent on the same period in 2007. Gartner said the rise was mainly due to Android-based smartphones being launched through T-Mobile during Q4.
While Linux is currently trailing Mac OS X for smartphone market share, it's not a situation expected to last for long. Android-powered smartphone sales are set to overtake iPhone sales by 2012, a recent report by analyst Informa Telecoms & Media predicted.
Global smartphone sales growth slowed to just 3.7 per cent in Q4 08, according to Gartner.
This article was originally posted on silicon.com.
Talkback Most Recent of 30 Talkback(s)
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iPhone suffers as Android buoys Linux cause
give my applause to analyst for being full of shite and they predictions as just as good as end of world predictions.
mtint13th Mar 2009 -
Sad article attempting to spin.
Most people realize that comparing consecutive
quarters is a relatively meaningless measure as
different products are on different cycles.
Clearly Q3 was a big cycle for the iPhone as a
new product and OS were released. It should be
expected that sales would level off beyond the
initial surge.
A more telling story is to compare sales from
the same quarter of different years (ie. Q4
2007 with Q4 2008). In this case, Linux went
from nearly 2.7 million to nearly 3.2 million
units or roughly 19% growth. Apple went from
1.9 million to over 4 million units in that
same period. That's puts Apple at 111% growth
year over year for the same quarter. Why
doesn't ZDnet mention this fact? While Windows
mobile was relatively flat, the clear losers
were Nokia/Symbian and Palm.
techconc13th Mar 2009 -
"report"
how can some cristal ball looking by a "research" firm be a report? and
and i still don't get how all the windows pundits are obsessed with
market share. apple doesn't care much about marketshare, they care
about PROFIT.
and with 4,6 billion revenue from the iphone in q3 2008 alone with a
margin north of 30% the iphone is by far the most profitable phone on
the market. let the others have the units and marketshare with razor
thin or even negative margins (as you can see at the moment in the
race to the bottom in the windows netbook market), apple will have the
a hugh part of the profit.
bannedfromzdnetagain13th Mar 2009 -
re: Report
I think you need to rethink the logic in your statement. Market Share is what produces profit, that is as simple as it gets. Apple like Microsoft will always want to boost market share as it increases profits, loss of market share reduces profits. Simple logic works everytime.
mburton32513th Mar 2009 -
All other things being equal, profitability is due to market share.
But that's not the whole story.
Another factor as ellroy indicated is the profit margin for each unit sold. If I have a 20% margin, and you have a 2% margin, I only have to have 10% of your market share to be 100% as profitable.
Letophoro13th Mar 2009 -
Higher margins are ultimately risky
The insistence on higher profit margins eventually kills the product's competitiveness, leading to a decline in sales that accelerates as the competition lowers prices and adds features. Being dependent on a smaller subset of people to make money is ultimately dangerous because it will only take one false move to bring your business down - for every customer you lose, you lose 10 times the profits of the other companies.
eMJayy13th Mar 2009 -
I'm a bit confused by these margin arguments...
...since the article is about the IPhone and Android. Android is free and Apple produces their own OS so thats besides the point. The IPhone sells for $199 and the G1 sells for $179. So exactly where is this greater profit margin? I believe there was some info on the cost to produce the two phones but I would have to find it.
storm14k13th Mar 2009 -
Apple fanatics are the ones obsessed with marketshare
i still don't get how all the windows pundits are obsessed with market share
Don't you read any blogs here on ZDNet? The cheering from the Apple faithful every time it is announced that OS X crept up another 0.1% in the last month proves that it is the Apple pundits who care about marketshare.
We also won't mention that MS makes more profit than Apple so if profit is all that is important, MS still beats Apple.
NonZealot13th Mar 2009 -
Apple makes more in smartphone category
Windows Mobile revenue in 2008 was about $250 million.
iPhone revenue in 2008 was about $3 billion.
rynning13th Mar 2009 -
Sorry for the confusion
I wasn't talking profits specifically in the smartphone category, I was talking in general. My fault though, not yours, I didn't make that very clear. Regardless, if profit is the measure of a company's success then MS has the better strategy overall.
Of course, profits and marketshare are both silly guides to use when buying a product. Buy the best product for you. I only bring up WM marketshare, not as proof that WM is better (there are millions of other reasons why WM is better than OS X) but only to combat those who say that WM is dying. It isn't dying. Marketshare is increasing, sales are increasing, and profits are increasing, hardly the sign of a dying platform! NonZealot13th Mar 2009 -
Windows Mobile lost marketshare in 2008
So says Gartner.
They did have a small marketshare increase in 4Q08, primarily due to corporate buyers that had to spend their budget or lose it.
But that's ok for Microsoft. Their half-hearted attempt in R6.5 (hexagons anyone?) proved that they care little about the platform, and why would they? It does very little if anything for their bottom line. I doubt it lost money for them since it's obvious they didn't invest more than $250 million in it last year.rynning13th Mar 2009 -
NonZealot13th Mar 2009
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You keep saying that, and you're still wrong!
"We also won't mention that MS makes more profit than Apple so if profit
is all that is important"
You've made that statement a couple of times, and it's still not correct.
Over the last several quarters, Microsoft has had higher revenues, but
not profits. Those are two very different things, and mostly indicative of
Apple's incredibly high margins. Say what you will about Apple, but it
makes money.
matthew_maurice13th Mar 2009 -
Huh?
"Over the last several quarters, Microsoft has
had higher revenues, but not profits."
Last quarter, Microsoft had 16.63 billion in
revenue and 5.94 billion in profit. By
comparison, Apple had 10.17 billion in revenue
and 1.61 billion in profits. By every measure,
Microsoft has both higher revenue and higher
profits.
techconc13th Mar 2009 -
No, that's wrong, too.
Microsoft did NOT have $5.94 billion in profit in Q2 2009. That figure is
Operating Income, NET INCOME (i.e. profit) was $4.17 billion (both of
which were down year over year, BTW), but granted it is still more than
Apple's Q1 2009 net profit of $1.61 billion. However, the
important number isn't any of these, it's EPS, earnings per share-the
best accounting method of profitability. Apple's fully diluted earnings per
share, the amount of profit per share of all outstanding shares, options,
convertible bonds and warrants is $1.76 versus Microsoft's $0.47, 375%
more. So by neither "every measure" or the measure that matters most
has Microsoft been more profitable than Apple.
matthew_maurice13th Mar 2009
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